4 



THE 

KING'S STEWARDS 



BY 

/ 

V 

Rev. LOUIS ALBERT BANKS, D.D. 




AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY 
150 Nassau St., New York 




Two Corks Received 

JUN. \1 1902 

OOPYSIRHT ENTRY 

Cr.ASS <*■ XXc. No. 

copy a 



Copyright, 1902. 
By American Tract Society. 



I 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



I. The King's Stewards 3 

II. The Spiritual Stock Exchange 16 

III. The Folly of Blowing Out God's Torch 27 

IV. Spunk and Spirituality 38 

V. The Life That Will Stand a Thousand 

Years 48 

VI. The King's Insurance Company 59 

VII. The Flint- Face of Jesus 71 

VIII. Strong Hearts 81 

IX. An Old Portrait of a Christian 93 

X. Three Men Whom Jesus Called 105 

XI. Children's Rights 114 

XII. The Liberty to do Wrong 123 

XIII. The Uncut Leaves of the Book of Life. 132 

XIV. The Secret of a Happy Day 142 

XV. A Man Who Found a Pot of Gold 151 

XVI. The Right Setting for Spiritual Dia- 
monds 162 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

XVII. A Soul Among Lions : A Study of 



Browning's Saul 173 

XVIII. The Special Phases of Christianity 
Demanded by the New Cen- 
tury 185 

XIX. A Society Tragedy 195 

XX. The Book of Wishes 203 

XXI. Living a Day at a Time 215 

XXII. The Devil's Bait-Stick 226 

XXIII. Fate Knocking at the Door 235 

XXIV. The Man Who Runs 244 

XXV. The Life is the Light 255 

XXVI. God's Doorkeepers 264 

XXVII. The Child and the Serpent 274 

XXVIII. A King Who Played the Fool. ... 284 

XXIX. The Romance of a Word 293 

XXX. The Book With Wings 303 



I. 



The King's Stewards, 

" Stewards over all the substance and possession of the 
king." — i Chronicles 28: 1. 

This is from the swan-song of David. His great 
career was drawing near to its close. He had fought 
his last battle. He had sung his last psalm. His 
fingers were no longer light enough in their touch to 
awaken the music of the harp. Yet the soul of the 
man was stronger than ever. 

Before he left the world David determined to 
make sure that the one great purpose of his life in 
which he had been thwarted should be fulfilled after 
his death. And so he called the people together. It 
was a magnificent array. The great soldiers of the 
kingdom were there, the royal family, the princes 
of the different tribes, and after them the men of 
wealth and public spirit, the stewards of the king's 
possessions. The strength, and riches, and honor of 
the nation gathered about the old king on that last 
great, splendid occasion. Then for the last time 
David stood on his feet before them to speak. And 



6 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



when did a man make a nobler speech? Poor, in- 
deed, must be your imagination if you cannot behold 
him. There he stands, the grey-haired shepherd 
king. What memories gather about him as the peo- 
ple look on his face. They think of him when, as a 
youth, he won his spurs slaying the lion and the bear 
that sought to rob his flock yonder on the hills of 
Bethlehem. Some of the old men of that company 
remember how he came down to the army of Saul 
with a shepherd's sling in his hand on that bright 
morning, so long ago, when Goliath for the fortieth 
time strode forth from the army of the Philistines 
with his wicked taunt against God and his people, 
making a challenge that sent terror to the bravest 
hearts in Saul's camp. And the old men, who were 
only boys then, recall with tearful memories how 
the young David went forth with his shepherd's staff 
and his sling, and came back again with Goliath's 
sword in one hand and the head of the giant in the 
other. They recall the long days of exile, and some 
remember the hiding away in the mountains and in 
the caves, when David was hunted to the earth like 
a fox. Then they remember the crowning, and the 
triumph, and the growth of the kingdom. 

To others there David has been more a poet than 
a .king. Their, souls have fed on his music as bees 
feed on the honey of flowers, and David the Psalm- 
ist has been to them as the voice of God, speaking 
to them in all the deep experiences of pain and joy, 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



7 



of health and weakness, of failure and triumph, of 
life and death. 

Many men there are about him that recall this day 
incidents of that sad march when David fled into the 
wilderness to escape from Absalom. All that cam- 
paign comes back to them now as they look on the 
noble face of the old poet-king, that has on it already 
something of the glow of the other world so soon to 
dawn upon him. Oh, there is no one like David to 
them ! From the time he defended his lambs yonder 
in Bethlehem until now, where was there ever one so 
picturesque, so daring, so chivalrous, so brave, so 
undaunted, yet so gentle and so tender? a man 
whose very failures, whose very weaknesses, seemed 
to bring him closer to them, because they showed 
the true longing and purpose of the heart of a man 
who sought to keep near to God. Take all this into 
your thought and feel if you can the thrill of it as 
that group of men stand about David, the grey- 
headed, as he speaks to them : 

" Hear me, my brethren and my people : as for me, 
I had in my heart to build a house of rest for the ark 
of the covenant of the Lord, and for the footstool of 
our God, and had made ready for the building : but 
God said unto me, Thou shalt not build a house for 
my name, because thou hast been a man of war, and 
hast shed blood. Howbeit the Lord God of Israel 
chose me before all the house of my father to be king 
over Israel forever." And then David goes on to tell 



8 THE KING'S STEWARDS. 

that it was the purpose of God that his son Solomon 
should be king, and should build the temple. Then 
he reveals to the people the kind of a temple it is to 
be, and ends his address with these wonderful sen- 
tences : " Now I have prepared with all. my might 
for the house of my God the gold for things to be 
made of gold, and the silver for things of silver, and 
the brass for things of brass, the iron for things of 
iron, and wood for things of wood; onyx stones, 
and stones to be set, glistering stones, and of divers 
colors, and all manner of precious stones, and marble 
stones in abundance. Moreover, because I have set 
my affection to the house of my God, I have of mine 
own proper good, of gold and silver, which I have 
given to the house of my God, over and above all I 
have prepared for the holy house." Then David 
makes his new subscription of three thousand talents 
of gold and seven thousand talents of silver to> com- 
plete the temple. He has been saving this up for 
that purpose. Following, the old king takes up the 
subscription among his people. I see the glow on his 
face and the tears in his eyes, as he exclaims : "Who 
then is willing to consecrate his service this day unto 
the Lord?" 

There was, as we would expect, a splendid re- 
sponse to the liberality and the appeal of the king. 
And after the generous subscription had been given, 
the historian says, " The people rejoiced, for that 
they offered willingly, because with perfect heart 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



9 



they offered willingly to the Lord; and David the 
king also rejoiced with great joy." 

There is nothing finer of its kind in the Bible, or in 
all literature, than the old king's prayer of thanks- 
giving after the money had been raised to build the 
temple. The writer of the Book of Chronicles says 
that David blessed the Lord before all the congrega- 
tion, and said : 

" Blessed be thou, Lord God of Israel our father, 
forever and ever. Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, 
and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and 
the majesty : for all that is in the heaven and in the 
earth is thine; thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and 
thou art exalted as head above all. Both riches and 
honor come of thee, and thou reignest over all; and 
in thy hand is power and might ; and in thy hand it is 
to make great, and to give strength unto all. Now 
therefore, our God, we thank thee, and praise thy 
glorious name. But who am I, and what is my peo- 
ple, that we should be able to offer so willingly after 
this sort? for all things come of thee, and of thine 
own have we given thee. For we are strangers before 
thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers; our 
days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none 
abiding. O Lord our God, all this store that we have 
prepared to build thee a house for thy holy name 
cometh of thy hand, and is all thine own. I know 
also, my God, that thou triest the heart, and hast 
pleasure in uprightness. As for me, in the upright- 



IO 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



ness of my heart I have willingly offered all these 
things; and now have I seen with joy thy people, 
which are present here, to offer willingly unto thee." 

I have lingered so long with this picture because 
there does not seem to me to be anything like it in 
the Bible, or indeed anywhere else, to give us so 
clear a suggestion of our relation to God as his stew- 
ards. And that is the great theme which I want to 
press home upon our hearts. David had before him 
the men who were the stewards of all the king's 
possessions. But he did not tax them, forcing them 
to give for the building of the temple, for he knew 
that would not please God. He took the nobler 
way : he opened his own heart to them ; he told them 
of the longing he had had to build a palace, not for 
himself, but for God. He told how he had pre- 
pared for it, how willingly he poured out the great 
gifts which he named, and then he laid it upon their 
own hearts and consciences to decide, as God's stew- 
ards, what they ought to do in the case. 

The point I wish to emphasize is suggested 
by the words of our text, " Stewards over all the sub- 
stance and possession of the king." We are God's 
stewards. He has put great interests into our 
hands. They do not belong to us. We are only 
stewards. For the time being we control them, yet 
the time will come when we must give an account of 
our stewardship. Paul declares in writing to the 
Corinthians, that the one great thing about a stew- 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



ii 



ard is that he shall be found faithful ; that he shall 
not come to think that he owns the goods himself, 
but that he shall conduct his stewardship with his 
thought constantly on what will please his Master, 
so that after a while, when his Lord shall come and 
call him to give an account, he shall be found faith- 
ful. In that same letter, and speaking of this very 
matter, Paul says that it does not much matter how 
men shall judge us, because they are easily mistaken, 
but the judgment of God, who gave us our steward- 
ship, is what counts. 

Let us think of some of the things over which we 
are the King's stewards. Time is one of them. God 
has given us these lives which we are living. Time 
does not belong to us. We could not hold on to an 
hour of it to save our souls. It is only loaned to us, 
or rather it is committed to us, moment by mo- 
ment. We have all power over it while it lasts. 
We are free to do what we will in it while 
we have it, but we shall have to give an account 
of the way we use it. If we waste it, if we squander 
it, if we disgrace it, if we do evil with it, then we 
have been squandering the goods God gave us. For 
over these days that are passing by so swiftly we 
are God's stewards. Sometimes we hear foolish 
people talk about " killing time/' I fear that that 
phrase " killing time " will be a very unpopular one 
on the Judgment Day. Oh, if we only knew how 
precious time is! If we could only appreciate the 



12 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



glorious use we can make of it as God's stewards, we 
would not talk about murdering it in order to get rid 
of it. 

We are God's stewards over our personal vitality; 
over the peculiar personal life that is in us. You 
may call it ability, or talent, or influence, or what you 
will, but it is the power of personality which is con- 
stantly either blessing or cursing the people who 
come in touch w T ith us. Wherever Jesus went, vir- 
tue went out of him. Wherever man or woman 
touched him, with the awful appeal of human need 
and hunger, healing power went forth. Now God 
has committed to every one of us as stewards the 
power to bless others. If we live with open heart 
and loving faith toward him, we shall have sym- 
pathy, and inspiration, and divine comfort to give to 
those who come in contact with us. It will be true 
of us, as it was of the man about whom the poet 
wrote, 

" His life grew fragrant with the inner soul, 
And weary folk who passed him on the street 
Saw Christ's love beam from out the wistful eyes, 
And had new confidence in God and man." 

We are stewards also of our money ; and not only 
of that, but of our power to get money. Our prop- 
erty does not belong to us, for all the power to ac- 
quire it, and all the health, and strength, and ability, 
and time that were necessary for us to come into its 
possession were intrusted to us by the Lord. We 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



13 



are only stewards, and must give an account again 
unto God as to how we have used what he has put in 
our hands. A friend once stepped into the office of a 
business man who was an earnest Christian, and 
found him standing at his desk with his hands 
full of bank-bills which he was carefully count- 
ing, as he laid one after another in a pile. 
After a moment, the man who had come in 
from the outside said to his friend, " Just count 
out fifty dollars from that pile of notes and make 
yourself, or some other person, a life member of this 
society " — and he went on to press his claim. His 
friend finished his count, and then replied, " I am 
handling trust funds now ! " His answer suddenly 
illuminated the mind of the other man, who was so- 
liciting funds for a good cause, and he replied with 
the question, " Do you ever handle anything but 
trust funds ? " The message ought to come home to 
our hearts. All our funds are entrusted to us, and 
we must deal with them, not in a way simply to meet 
our own pleasure, or the pleasure of our friends, but 
the pleasure of God, to whom they belong. The 
question which Jesus put in the mouth of one of his 
characters in the parable of the unjust steward, is 
one which we should frequently put to ourselves, 
" How much owest thou unto my Lord ? " I am 
sure that if we put that question honestly we shall 
find that we are greatly indebted to God. 

A story is told of a merchant who was a God- 



14 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



fearing man and had been very successful in busi- 
ness, but whose spiritual life — as is, alas, too often 
the case — did not grow rich in proportion to his 
bank account. His offerings to the Lord were but lit- 
tle, if any, larger than when he had been a poor man. 
One evening he had a wonderful dream. A visitor 
entered the apartment, and quietly looking around 
at the many luxuries by which he was surrounded, 
without any comment presented him with the re- 
ceipts for his subscriptions to various societies, and 
urged their claims upon his enlarged sympathy. 
The merchant replied with various excuses, and at 
last grew impatient at the continued appeal. The 
stranger rose, and fixing his eyes on his companion, 
said, in a voice that thrilled to his soul, " One year 
ago to-night you thought that your daughter lay 
dying; you could not rest for agony. Upon whom 
did you call that night? " The merchant started and 
looked up. A change seemed to have passed over 
the whole form of his visitor, whose eyes were fixed 
upon him with a calm, penetrating look, as he con- 
tinued, " Five years ago, when you lay at the brink 
of the grave, and thought that if you died then you 
would leave your family unprovided for — you re- 
member how you prayed then. Who saved you 
then? " Pausing a moment, he went on in a lower 
and still more impressive tone : " Do you remember, 
fifteen years since, that time when you felt yourself 
so lost, so helpless, so hopeless ; when you spent day 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



and night in prayer; when you thought that you 
would give the world for one hour's assurance that 
your sins were forgiven — who listened to you then?" 
" It was my God and Saviour ! " said the merchant, 
with a sudden burst of remorseful feeling ; " oh, yes, 
it was he ! " " And has he ever complained of being 
called on too often?" inquired the stranger, in a 
voice of reproachful sweetness. " Say, are you will- 
ing to begin this night and ask no more of him, if he 
from this time will ask no more of you? " " Oh, 
never ! never ! " said the merchant, throwing himself 
at his visitor's feet. The figure vanished, and he 
awoke, his whole soul stirred within him. " O 
God, my Saviour! what have I been doing! Take 
all, take everything ! What is all that I have, com- 
pared with what thou hast done for me? " 

I would that God would give us some vision like 
that to arouse us to a proper sense of our dependence 
upon the loving kindness of our Heavenly Father. 
God save us from becoming purse-proud, or avar- 
icious, or stingy, or greedy of money, for we are the 
King's stewards, and we are dealing only with what 
is his own. Surely when we remember his goodness 
to us, when we remember his mercy and love in Jesus 
Christ, we must meet him with open hand when he 
asks of us for the furtherance of his cause and king- 
dom. 



II. 

The Spiritual Stock Exchange. 

" Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead 
of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree." — Isaiah 55 : 13. 

" The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me ; because ... he 
hath sent me to . . . give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil 
of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of 
heaviness." — Isaiah 61 : 1, 3. 

" For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I will bring silver, 
and for wood brass, and for stones iron." — Isaiah 60: 17. 

There is a spiritual stock exchange as well as an 
earthly one. The stock exchanges of London and 
Berlin and Paris and New York make so much noise, 
and occupy so large a space in the daily papers, that 
we are in danger of thinking they are the most im- 
portant; but we could not make a greater mistake. 
The spiritual stock exchange is of infinitely more im- 
portance. 

A strong and virile English author, writing re- 
cently of the power of the stock exchange in modern 
life, says that the roar of speculation so fills the air 
that it drowns all voices but its own ; and he assures 
us that it is this all-absorbing devotion to earthly 
wealth and success against which Christ utters his 



THE SPIRITUAL STOCK EXCHANGE. 17 



great protest. Christ will have his men rich, but ac- 
cording to a true scale of values. According to 
Jesus, the fool is he who is reckoning in the wrong 
coin, and is not " rich toward God." And our 
writer proceeds to show that Christ is not alone in 
this teaching. All the great world-systems that 
have really counted pronounce the same verdict. 
They all recognize that the true riches are in charac- 
ter. Plato puts material wealth a long way down 
in his scale of life's good. The Egyptians had a 
proverb which repeats almost literally Christ's say- 
ing about the treasure in heaven. Solon defined a 
happy man as " He who, moderately supplied with 
this world's goods, had done the most honorable 
deeds and lived temperately." Cyrus, dreading lux- 
ury, spoke of " Fertile soils as yielding infertile 
spirits." Socrates reminded the Athenian citizens 
how his one business had been to enjoin upon young 
and old that their chief care was not their persons 
nor properties, but the improvement of the soul. 
Rome echoes to Athens the same doctrine in the say- 
ing of Cicero, " Not to be covetous is the true 
riches." Ruskin's political economy is the transla- 
tion into modern English of Christ's doctrine of 
wealth, and is summed up in one sentence : " The 
only real wealth consists in noble and happy human 
beings." 

The statement is undoubtedly true that whenever 
any men or women put the possession of riches in 



18 THE KING'S STEWARDS. 

the first place in their thought and struggle, just so 
surely do they lose the art of successful living. 
They lose, of necessity, the true poise of mind, the 
proper mental attitude toward life. Give us an age 
when everybody is given up to making money, and 
to thought about that more than anything else, and 
all real excellence will cease. In such an age there 
can be no great music, no noble painting, no pro- 
found scholarship, no glorious poetry. Heroes will 
be smothered to death, and martyrs for conscience' 
sake will live only in legends and dreams of the past. 

The passages which I have selected as the foun- 
dation for our theme are rich in their illustration of 
God's purpose toward us. It is not to take from, 
but to add to, our lives that God is speaking to us in 
the Gospel. He comes to offer us iron for our stone, 
brass for our wood, silver for our iron, and gold 
for our brass. He sent Christ to give men beauty 
for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment 
of praise for the spirit of heaviness. Instead of the 
thorn of selfishness, he would have us grow up to 
be the fir-tree with its balsam; instead of the brier 
with its pricking ugliness, he would have us trans- 
formed into the myrtle with its beauty and useful- 
ness. This is the kind of spiritual stock exchange to 
which God calls us. 

The precious thing about God's stock exchange is 
that he lays it down as a foundation stone that he is 



THE SPIRITUAL STOCK EXCHANGE. xg 



able and willing through Jesus Christ to transform 
every sinner who will repent of his sins and take 
Christ ' as his Saviour, and will give him a pure 
heart, and a clean life, and a beautiful personality. 
And God lives up to that. But, remember, the con- 
dition is the utter giving up of our sins. An 
Irishman once went to confess to the parish 
priest, and obtain absolution. He was told to kneel 
at a chair. While on his knees the penitent allowed 
his eyes to wander about the room, finally resting on 
the priest's gold watch, which lay on a near-by table. 
It was but a moment before the watch was ticking 
away quietly inside Pat's blouse. The priest, re- 
turning, commanded him to acknowledge the sins 
for which he desired absolution. " Father," said 
the rogue, "I have stolen, and what shall I do?" 
" Restore," said the priest, " the thing you have 
stolen to its rightful owner." "Do you take it?" 
" No, I shall not; you must give it to the owner." 
" But he has refused to take it." " If this be the 
case, you may keep it." And so Pat was given full 
absolution, and reverently crossed himself and went 
away with an easy conscience. Now, is it not true 
that there are many men and women who live much 
like that? They are always in a chronic state of 
repentance, and yet they never really repent. They 
are always asking God to forgive them their sins, 
and yet, deep down in their hearts, they are con- 



20 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



scious that they expect to commit the same sin again. 
There can be no exchange of spiritual gold for the 
brass of sin under such conditions. 

There was a man who was an officer in the church, 
and who got drunk, and could not get any relief for 
his conscience. A faithful fellow church-member 
went to see him. The man who had been intoxicated 
said to him, " I cannot recover my peace of mind." 
They knelt down and prayed. Said the kind friend, 
" Tell the Lord all about it." In a stilted sort of 
way he began, " O Lord, thou knowest that in a 
moment of unwatchfulness thy servant was over- 
taken in a grievous sin." " Nonsense," said the 
wise friend; "tell the Lord that you got drunk." 
He rose from his knees and said he could not. His 
friend went away, but his awful conviction of sin 
grew worse and worse. Finally he sent for his friend 
to come back. When the latter came he told the 
offender, as before, to pray and tell the Lord all 
about it. It was quite a while before he could do it. 
But at last he blurted out, " O God, I don't know 
what to say. I am ashamed of myself. I went and 
got drunk ! " With that his heart broke and the 
flood came, and with the flood and the storm there 
came the rainbow, and then the new heaven and the 
new earth, and his soul was stilled with peace. You 
can get peace in the same way. You will never get 
the forgiveness of your sins so long as you wrap up 
your sin in fine language and try to take the sting 



THE SPIRITUAL STOCK EXCHANGE. 21 



out by making it seem better than it is. Repent of 
your sin. Look at it in all its ugliness, in all its 
slime, in all its loathsomeness, and turn away from 
it, and tell God about it. Ask him, for Christ's sake 
to forgive it, and he who came to give you beauty 
for ashes will hear your prayer. 

Perhaps you are seeking to live the Christian life, 
but find yourself constantly shut out from the best 
life of a Christian by a temptation to which you have 
yielded, to think more of yourself than of the good 
of others. The great sin of good people is selfish- 
ness. The thorn branches and brier patches of hu- 
man life about us would rapidly be changed into the 
sweet-smelling balsam and the fruitful myrtle, if 
only we Christians would live unselfishly the Chris- 
tian life. That can overcome everything. The late 
Dr. Maltbie D. Babcock was passing one day a large 
hardware store and, remembering a number of ar- 
ticles of which he had need, entered. The clerks 
were probably busy, and doubtless inattentive. He 
waited a few minutes and no one took notice of him. 
Instead of going out in vexation, or rebuking them, 
he stepped to a shifting-ladder on one side, and, 
mounting it, took from a box several articles he de- 
sired, and placed them on the counter; then rolling 
the ladder along a little, he ascended again and got 
other articles, depositing them as before. This he 
repeated. Then, getting them together, he sought, 
and at length secured, the attention of one of the 



22 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



clerks, who came forward, no doubt a little ashamed 
of the treatment the stranger had received, and evi- 
dently in no very agreeable mood. 

" I want these articles. How much will they 
be?" 

" Two dollars and a half," the clerk said, very 
crossly. 

" Well, you may send them to the Rev. M. D. 
Babcock, 14 East Thirty-seventh street. And now, 
what is your name ? " 

The clerk, sulky and apprehensive, replied, 
"Bradley." 

" And what is your first name? " 

Unwillingly and slowly, " Charles." 

" May I ask one other question — do you go to 
church ? " 

" No, I'm no church-goer." 

Dr. Babcock then put his hand pleasantly on the 
clerk's shoulder, and said with enthusiasm, " Now, 
Charlie, I want you to come down to my church, 
Fifth avenue and Thirty-seventh street, next Sun- 
day. I shall preach, and I shall be real glad to see 
you. I shall have an eye out for you." 

The next Sunday " Charlie " came, with one or 
two of his friends, and the Sunday after that every 
clerk in the establishment came, and they continued 
to attend from that time. 

But for the " love " which " is not easily pro- 



THE SPIRITUAL STOCK EXCHANGE. 23 



yoked," and which " seeketh not her own," such a 
result could not have been possible. 

A large and beautiful life can never be lived self- 
ishly. Neither the highest purity nor the highest 
happiness can ever be had except in the sunshiny 
atmosphere of unselfishness and service. 

Edward Rowland Sill sings this message in his 
own clear way : 

" My tower was grimly builded, 
With many a bolt and bar, 
' And here,' I thought, ' I will keep my life 
From the bitter world afar.' 

" Dark and chill was the floor, 
Where never a sunbeam lay, 
And the mold crept up on the dreary wall, 
With its ghost touch, day by day. 

" One morn, in my sullen musings, 
A flutter and cry I heard ; 
And close to the dim and rusty casement 
There clung a frightened bird. 

" Then back I flung the shutter 
That was never before undone, 
And safely kept till its wings were rested 
The little weary one. 

" But in through the open window, 
Which I had forgot to close, 
There had burst a gush of cheery sunshine 
And a summer scent of rose. 



2 4 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



" For all the while I had burrowed 
There in my dingy tower, 
Lo ! the birds had sung and the leaves had danced 
From hour to sunny hour. 

" And such balm and warmth and beauty 
Came drifting in since then, 
That the window still stands open wide, 
And shall never be shut again." 

I call you to God's stock exchange to-day. If it 
is a life full of worry and anxiety that is keeping 
your heart heavy, bringing the crow's-feet to your 
cheeks and causing your hair to turn grey, come 
and exchange your spirit of heaviness for the gar- 
ment of praise. An old Indian woman, in describ- 
ing her condition before she accepted Christ, said : 
" I was like a spool of thread that, becoming un- 
ravelled, had gotten so tangled up that nobody could 
straighten it. So I brought my tangled self to Jesus, 
and he loosed the knots and made the twisted threads 
straight." He can do the same for you. The 
tangled skein of your life may be beyond all your 
power to straighten out, but Jesus Christ can 
straighten it, and give you the oil of joy in the place 
of mourning. 

It may be that you are interested in the Stock 
Exchange in Wall Street, but have been forget- 
ful of the coin that passes current in God's spir- 
itual exchange. You have been interested in 
bonds, and shares of stock, and other securities, but 



THE SPIRITUAL STOCK EXCHANGE. 25 



you have forgotten about faith, and repentance, and 
pardon. 

An earnest Christian worker was once traveling 
on a train, when he seized an opportunity to walk 
around among the passengers and distribute a pocket 
full of tracts. One of the passengers refused, and 
taking a race-card out of his pocket, held it up, say- 
ing, " You see this ; that's my religion." 

" Is it, my friend?" 

" Yes," he replied. 

" I suppose you have a good many of those 
cards?" 

" Oh, yes, I have them pinned all over my mantel- 
piece." 

" Well then, go on and collect as many more as 
you can; pin them all around your room, and when 
the doctor tells you that you have only ten minutes 
to live, take them all down, count them over, and see 
what your religion is worth." 

They sat quiet, the one in silent prayer, the other 
in anxious thought. When the Christian man 
reached his station and had risen to leave the car, 
the man with the race-card said, " I say, you can 
give me one of those papers, if you will." 

Sometimes I hear a man say that his lodge, or 
something of that sort, is his religion ; and I wonder 
what his religion will be worth when it comes to the 
end. 

I once heard a story that made a great impression 



26 THE KING'S STEWARDS. 

on me, as illustrating the peril of an insecure foun- 
dation for eternal hope : A man who was dying had 
led such a moral life that his neighbors thought that 
of course he would get to heaven. At last he came 
to his fatal illness and passed into a kind of trance 
just before he died. He regained consciousness 
after a time, however, but as his friends and neigh- 
bors bent over him it was no triumphant assurance 
that they heard, but the sad and terrible words, " I 
have missed it by just a little ! " It is a terrible thing 
for a man to be struggling for riches all his life, and 
find at the last that his coin is worthless in the great- 
est stock exchange of all. That was what Jesus 
meant when he said, " What shall it profit a man, if 
he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own 
soul?" 



III. 



The Folly of Blowing Out 
God's Torch* 

" Quench not the Spirit."— i Thessalonians 5 : 19. 

There is no sublimer thought for any man than 
this : that the Spirit of Almighty God may dwell in 
him, enlightening him, convincing him of his duty, 
electrifying his will, energizing him for the great 
duties of life. This presence of the Spirit of God in 
the human heart is illustrated in many ways, but in 
none so frequently or effectively as by comparison 
with a fire or a light. 

In the text we are brought face to face with a 
great and perilous fact, that is, the possibility of 
blowing out this torch which God has put into our 
hearts, so that we shall be left in darkness and lose 
all the enlightenment, all the glorious energy, all the 
saving power of the presence of God. As no other 
misfortune could be so terrible to us as this, let us 
study it with reverent and earnest hearts. 

There are several places where we may quench 
the Spirit. First of all, we may quench the Spirit 



28 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



in our own hearts. But it is also possible for us to 
quench the Spirit in other hearts. We may do this 
in many ways. We may destroy the power of the 
Holy Spirit to influence our neighbors or our friends 
by laughing at their convictions of duty, or sneer- 
ing at their religion. This is often done. We may 
quench the Spirit in others through our own sin- 
fulness of character. Our influence may be so bale- 
ful that it will put out the light of the Spirit in their 
hearts. We may also quench the Spirit which 
shines in the Bible, so that for us there will be no 
light there. Other men and women coming to the 
Scriptures will still find in them the light of life, but 
for us they will be dark. This is often done by peo- 
ple who use the Bible lightly and for ignoble pur- 
poses, robbing it in their thoughts of its sacred and 
holy character. For them its torch has gone out. 
We cannot be too careful, lest we blow out the torch 
which lights up God's word for our souls. 

Let us study some of the ways in which we may 
quench the Spirit in ourselves. One way is by sup- 
porting that which we know to be wrong. There 
is a special woe pronounced in the Bible for the man 
who calls good " evil," and evil " good." It is a 
terrible thing to believe that a thing is wrong, and 
ought to be denounced as wrong, and yet, for the 
sake of some imaginary or real good for ourselves, 
to silence our conscience, and support it, and before 
the world call it " good." That is deliberately 



THE FOLLY OF BLOWING OUT GOD'S TORCH. 29 

quenching the Spirit. The Holy Spirit shining into 
our consciences says to us : " This is wrong." But 
we are false to the teaching of the Spirit, and so we 
blow out God's torch. How many men and women 
have driven themselves into the darkness that way! 

We may quench the Spirit by uncharitable judg- 
ments of the people with whom we are associated. 
Have you never noticed the lowering of your re- 
ligious temperature whenever you have permitted 
yourself to become censorious in your judgment of 
the motives of others? Charity is essential to the 
free presence of God's Spirit in our hearts. God is 
love, and he cannot live in an unloving heart. A 
yielding to angry temper is another way of quench- 
ing the Spirit very much like the last. Perhaps as 
many quench the Spirit in this way as in any other. 
Some people's religious life is a series of ups and 
downs, high hills and low valleys, mountain-top 
visions, followed by valleys that are filled with fear- 
some nightmares and haunting devils, because of the 
yielding again and again to an invasion of the de- 
mon of bad temper. Many grieve the Spirit of God, 
and many others finally quench the Spirit and are 
given over to the bondage of anger and hate, through 
yielding to evil temper. 

Another method of quenching the Spirit akin to 
some of these I have mentioned, is by yielding to 
prejudices — the refusal to have an open mind. The 
stubbornness of good people is one of the saddest 



30 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



chapters in all human experience. One could write 
volumes of stories telling of the sad havoc that has 
come through the mulishness, to use a Scriptural 
term which David set the example for, of people 
who, in the main, mean to be good and serve God, 
but who give themselves over to prejudices. Under 
the control of prejudice their eyes are blinded so 
that they cannot see. The Spirit is quenched. 

There is no surer way to quench the Spirit than 
to do what conscience says is wrong. No matter 
who permits it. No matter if the whole world is 
doing the same thing. If the Spirit of God shining 
in your conscience says to you, " This is wrong ! " 
then you must not do it. If you do, you blow out 
the torch, and will go stumbling along without light. 

The indulgence of appetites and passion, so that 
the body with its lusts and desires comes to be mas- 
ter, and thought of its comfort comes before that of 
the culture of the soul, is a sure way of quenching the 
Spirit. 

An absorption in business, or in worldly pleas- 
ure, so that your thought, and imagination, and 
care are taken up with the things of this world more 
than with those of the Spirit, will quench the Spirit. 
If we are to enjoy the presence of God, and our 
lives are to be made happy and strong through his 
light and guidance and support, then God must be 
first, and not second, in our devotion. One of the 
first great declarations God makes in claiming his 



THE FOLLY OF BLOWING OUT GOD'S TORCH. 31 



ruler ship over man is, "I thy God, am a jealous 
God." 

A trifling spirit on our part will blow out God's 
torch in us. Many men are eaten with moths; 
they fritter away their power to think great 
thoughts and do great deeds. To be stirred by the 
Spirit of God with deep sympathy and compassion 
for the oppressed, or to be aroused to heroic fervor 
by some impassioned plea for a great cause ; to have 
the Spirit of God show us a great opportunity to do, 
and dare, and sacrifice, and then to trifle with it, to 
wipe our tears, compose our spirits, and go our way 
as if nothing had happened, is a terrible thing. 
There is no surer way to quench the Spirit, to blow 
out the torch, and leave ourselves in darkness. 

There are also negative ways by which men 
quench the Spirit. All one needs to* do is to neglect 
prayer. A really spiritual life has never been lived 
without prayer. In the very nature of the case such 
a thing is impossible. If your Christian life comes 
to be less prayerful, you may be very sure that you 
are already grieving the Spirit of God. You have 
only to go on, praying less and less frequently, let- 
ting the thought of prayer and the need of prayer 
die out of your consciousness until you cease to pray, 
to quench the Spirit of God entirely in yourself. 
Prayer is the channel through which God keeps your 
soul freshened with the strength of heaven. 

On the coast of Arabia, where there is almost no 



32 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



rainfall, the natives find water in springs that burst 
forth at the bottom of the sea. At some points divers 
go down with goat-skin bottles under their arms., and 
fill them with water as it bursts out of the rock-bed 
of the ocean. In other places the springs of fresh 
water are so strong that when hollow bamboo poles 
are pushed down into them, the water rises through 
the tubes, and pours directly into vessels held by 
the boatmen. In this rushing life of ours, sur- 
rounded as we are by the salt sea of business, and 
struggling for our daily bread, we need to give our- 
selves often to secret prayer, God's most perfect 
channel through which the Water of Life, sweet and 
pure, may come to refresh our thirsty souls. The 
promise of Jesus that those who pray to him in 
secret shall be rewarded openly, still holds good, and 
its rich provisions are for you, as truly as for any 
saint who has ever profited by them in the past. 

Another negative way by which men quench the 
Spirit is the neglect of religious conversation and 
fellowship. Coals are kept alive by keeping them 
together. If you want to deaden any coal in the 
grate, set it off by itself on the hearth. It will stop 
flaming almost at once; then it will smoke for a 
little while, and then blacken and die. So it is with 
our Christian experience: we need the fellowship 
of other Christians. As Frances Willard used to 
say, " Religion means together." We ought to talk 
much with each other about spiritual things. Not 



THE FOLLY OF BLOWING OUT GOD'S TORCH. 33 



to do it is a positive loss, and to fail entirely is to 
quench the Spirit of God. Next to prayer, there 
is no quicker way to kindle into a bright flame your 
torch of spiritual light and power than to converse, 
either privately with another Christian, or in the 
class-meeting or prayer-meeting, about the deep 
things of God. 

The result of quenching the Spirit I have already 
suggested. It means that the light is taken from us, 
and we are left to sit in darkness. It means what it 
meant to Saul when he saw God going from him at 
the going of Samuel, leaving him in a world of 
silence with no God to speak to him. It is the great- 
est tragedy that can come to any man or woman, 
to quench the Spirit of God; to blow out the only 
torch that can light us safely through this world 
and happily into the next. 

Dr. R. W. Clark tells how he once visited a 
young man who was sick and wished to see him. 
When Dr. Clark entered the room he was astonished 
to see so little sign of illness. He remarked on this 
astonishment. The young man replied, " I am not 
sick in my body, but in my soul. I am in deep dis- 
tress." Being asked the cause of his distress, he 
said : " During the revival in our church, I have not 
only resisted its influence, but have made sport of 
the young converts ; I have ridiculed those who were 
seeking the salvation of their souls, and I feel that 
I have committed an unpardonable sin, and that 



34 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



there is no hope for me." Dr. Clark said to him, 
''Your sins are indeed fearfully great; but if you 
sincerely repent, and will now believe in the Lord 
Jesus Christ, he will pardon you." He then re- 
ferred to the Saviour's compassion on the thief on 
the cross, and to other cases that might awaken hope 
in his mind. But everything that was said failed to 
reach his case. His reply to every argument, or ap- 
peal, or passage of Scripture that was quoted was 
the same, " I have quenched the Spirit, there is no 
hope for me." And so it went on for days until he 
died in the depths of despair. Like Saul, he had 
driven God away. He had blown out the torch in 
his soul. 

On the other hand, the results of yielding to the 
Spirit of God, and giving obedience to his light and 
guidance, are the most glorious that can come to 
any human being. Under such circumstances sin is 
consumed utterly from the soul. The imagination 
is cleansed; the heart becomes the abode of pure 
thoughts; the imagination becomes peopled with 
dreams of noble achievements for the blessing of 
others; a holy fervor is kindled in the soul, and 
there is about the nature and character so divinely 
inhabited a spiritual power to help and to bless men. 

A scientific man of unquestionable authority, who 
has been engaged in a microscopic investigation of 
the gold-bearing river sands, says he observed that 
the thirteen-year-old daughter of his companion 



THE FOLLY OF BLOWING OUT GOD'S TORCH. 35 



had only to lay the flat of her hand on the sands, and 
particles of gold-dust would adhere to it. Every 
time she repeated the action her palm was almost 
covered with the gold-dust that continued to cling 
to it. Whenever she grasped a handful of sand, and 
would shake her hand, the sand would fall to the 
ground, but the flakes of gold would remain cling- 
ing to the palm. No other person in the company 
had that peculiar ability. This remarkable fact con- 
vinced the scientist that there is in nature a power 
whose influence in attracting gold is similar to that 
which magnetism exerts on iron; and this little girl 
possessed that power. The presence of the Spirit 
of God, having free course in a human heart and 
life, is like that. Jesus possessed this power su- 
premely. Whoever he talked with, whether it was a 
blind beggar like Bartimaeus, or an avaricious swin- 
dler like Zacchseus, or a madman like the demon- 
possessed slave of Gadara, or a poor vile woman like 
the one who gave him a drink at the well of Sychar, 
Christ brought to the surface at once any true gold 
in their characters. That which was bad in them 
fell away, as the sand fell from the little girl's hand, 
but the true gold of penitence and faith, the pledge 
of their childhood to God, clung to Christ's hand. 
We must have that same divine Spirit in us if we 
are to go among men and women doing Christ's 
work. Let us then not quench, but welcome, the 
Holy Spirit — by daily contact with the Bible, by con- 



36 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



stant prayer and supplication, by Christian conver- 
sation, by thinking much upon the deep things of 
God, and through fellowship with Christ in the serv- 
ice of our fellow men. Thus let us guard the holy 
torch God has given us. 

Mastery over other souls to compel their obedi- 
ence to God can only come to us through the pres- 
ence and power of the Spirit of God in us. Mr. A. 
J. Cassatt, President of the Pennsylvania Railway, 
was recently making a quiet tour over one of the 
branches of the system and wandered into an out- 
of-the-way switch-yard where something one of the 
yardmen was doing did not meet with his approba- 
tion. He made some suggestion to the man, who 
asked : 

" Who are you that's trying to teach me my busi- 
ness? " 

" I am an officer of the road," replied Mr. Cas- 
satt. 

" Let's see your switch-key, then," said the man, 
suspiciously. 

Mr. Cassatt pulled from his hip-pocket his key- 
ring, to which was attached the switch-key, which 
no railroad man in Service is ever without. It was 
sufficient proof for the switchman, who then did as 
he was told. O my brother, my sister, you that 
name the name of Jesus Christ, do you carry your 
spiritual " switch-key " with you into all the affairs 
of your daily life? To have controlling power for 



THE FOLLY OF BLOWING OUT GOD'S TORCH. 37 

good over the men with whom we deal in the count- 
ing-room and the market-place; to have a heavenly 
influence over the pleasure-seeking souls with whom 
we come in contact in social life; to lift up and sum- 
mon for righteousness in God's name the people 
whom we meet, we must have the switch-key of the 
Holy Spirit. Let us pray with Charles Wesley: 

" O that in me the sacred fire 
Might now begin to glow, 
Burn up the dross of base desire, 
And make the mountains flow ! 

" Refining Fire, go through my heart ; 
Illuminate my soul; 
Scatter thy life through every part, 
And sanctify the whole. 

" My steadfast soul, from falling free, 
Shall then no longer move, 
While Christ is all the world to me, 
And all my heart is love." 



IV. 

Spunk and Spirituality. 

" Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and 
perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they 
marvelled; and they took knowledge of them that they had 
been with Jesus."— Acts 4: 13. 

Modern Christians lack spunk. In our day the 
aggressive quality of the Christian faith is not suffi- 
ciently illustrated. Where Christianity is perse- 
cuted, and to be a Christian causes a man necessarily 
to take his life in his hand, so that he is in constant 
danger of being mobbed, or imprisoned, or killed, 
it greatly develops the spirit of boldness and aggres- 
sion. Under such conditions, if a man does not be- 
lieve in his religion with all his heart and soul, so 
that it becomes the supreme master, he throws it up 
and is done with it. But in a worldly, material age 
the danger does not come from open attack, but 
from a smothering process. True, a man is just as 
dead when he is smothered to death with a feather 
bed as when he is stoned to death, or burned at the 
stake. But the approaches are not so clear, and 
many a man is undergoing the smothering process 
without alarm. 



SPUNK AND SPIRITUALITY. 



39 



We need to remind ourselves frequently of the 
sharp, clear cut antagonism between good and evil. 
We need to get something of Christ's meaning when 
he says, " He that gathereth not with me scattereth 
abroad." We need to get Paul's intensity of feeling 
when he declared that we must abhor that which 
is evil, and cleave to that which is good. 

It is the aggressive spirit which challenges the 
attention of the world to the divine power of Jesus 
Christ to affect the lives of men. Peter and John 
could have lived tamely and whispered their mes- 
sage quietly under their breath among the people, 
and have attracted nobody's attention and turned 
no public gaze on Jesus. But because they spoke 
boldly, because with brave face, and earnest word, 
and positive conviction, they uttered their message 
everywhere, and wrought their cures publicly, giv- 
ing all the glory to Christ, they challenged public 
attention. Men were compelled to stop and talk 
about them on the street, and declare that there must 
be something marvelous and wonderful about Jesus 
Christ, that he could take common, rude, unlearned 
men, and make such persuasive and powerful min- 
isters of them for the extending of his name and 
cause. Now, it is just this that we need to-day. 
Our churches often halt because of their very re- 
spectability. They fit so perfectly, so harmoni- 
ously, so smoothly, into the life of the time, that 
they challenge nobody's attention. There is nothing 



40 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



about them bold enough to make men stop excitedly 
in the street to discuss what the church says or 
stands for. 

Now, this is all wrong. This is not an age in 
which the church of Jesus Christ ought to be as 
popular as it is. Jesus said, " I came not to send 
peace, but a sword." It is not the duty of the Chris- 
tian church to live meekly and tamely in the midst 
of the vices and crimes surrounding us in these 
great cities. It is a shame that the church arouses 
so little hatred, so little enmity, so little excited and 
aggressive opposition from liquor saloons and gam- 
bling hells and brothels and corrupt politicians, as 
it does to-day. It ought to be too hot for them to 
live in its neighborhood without being scorched into 
remorse or driven into the farther darkness. There 
is too much peace for the church to-day. The Chris- 
tian church does not mean enough in the commu- 
nity. Christ could stand with flashing eye in the 
presence of the most respectable oppressors of the 
weak and say, " Ye are of your father, the devil ! " 
Corrupt and crafty politicians went squirming from 
his presence, wringing their hands and gnashing 
their teeth and plotting to kill him. Modern Chris- 
tianity needs some of that boldness, that spirit of 
the Divine Lord. Many of our great cities are out- 
raged by crafty and corrupt men who live by black- 
mail, who levy taxes on permitted vice and crime, 
that they may grow rich off the plunder. The Chris- 



SPUNK AND SPIRITUALITY. 



41 



tian church knows these things, and yet lives so 
meekly and tamely in the midst of it all that it seems 
a matter of no great importance. It is time for us to 
arouse ourselves. It is time for us to remember that 
the abhorrence of evil is a part of a righteous man's 
equipment as surely as is the spirit that cleaves to 
that which is good. Spunk in defense of righteous- 
ness, and in attack on evil, is the backbone of the 
man of spirituality. 

Some people talk about spirituality as though it 
were a jelly-like moral quality with no vertebrae in 
it. There could be no greater mistake. If Christ 
was spiritual; if Paul was spiritual; if Peter and 
John were spiritual men ; if Martin Luther and John 
Wesley deserved to be leaders of the spiritual hosts, 
then a vital, manly, aggressive indignation against 
evil and a bold defense of righteousness belong of 
right to the truly spiritual life. We need to make 
more of this type of spirituality. Then we shall 
show to the world that Christianity is something 
more than theory; something more than mere phi- 
losophy. If the modern church would only rise 
up en masse in city and state and nation to enforce 
by the power of public sentiment, through public 
discussion, through the press and the ballot-box, 
what is in our creeds and formal statements of be- 
lief, making them live, we would not only challenge 
the attention of mankind as never before, but we 
would mightily lift the burdens that are crushing the 



42 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



weak, and start a revival of genuine religion that 
would capture millions of men and women to the 
Christ who had exhibited such power in us. 

Mr. W. T. Moore, singing of the world's present 
need, concludes that the greatest need of mankind 
to-day is more spiritual muscle in its citizenship. 
He says : 

" — our next great need is men — 
Not little men, who have but little brains, 
Not those who mainly live for sordid gains ; 
But men of largeness in the Church and State, 
Men worthy to be called both good and great, 
Men with clear heads, clean hearts, and stainless hands,, 
Whose sympathy with souls includes all lands, 
Who live not in cold, lifeless, human creeds, 
But find their highest joy in noble deeds. 
These are the men this age calls to the front, 
And these must bear the battle's fiercest brunt, 
Until our selfish conflicts all shall cease, 
And Love shall bring us universal peace. 
Such men, with liberty to think and act, 
Will soon make all our brightest dreamland fact, 
Will stop all evil currents and secure 
A righteousness which will all time endure." 

A holy boldness, a certain loyalty to God which 
gives us the power to defy the world, is essential to 
the greatest success in winning men from their sins 
to God. Great soul winners have always been re- 
markable for that quality. Uncle John Vassar, who 
called himself " God's shepherd dog," and who 
brought back many a wandering lamb to the flock 
of his Master, was a man without any great ability 



SPUNK AND SPIRITUALITY. 



43 



or education, but a man who, like Peter and John, 
associated with Jesus until he caught his implicit 
faith in goodness and became as bold in its defense. 
He went to the front in the Civil War, constantly 
praying and holding meetings with the soldiers. He 
made such a stir in one regiment that a certain 
General Ruger sent a soldier to summon Vassar to 
his presence. The soldier found him in a religious 
meeting. He went in and touched the evangelist 
on the shoulder and whispered to him that the gen- 
eral wanted to see him. Uncle John said, " Boys, 
go right on with the meeting; the general wants to 
see me." When he reached the general's tent, that 
officer asked him gruffly, " Who are you, and what 
are you here for? You are not the chaplain of 
either of these regiments. We shot a man as a spy 
who came into our camp as you have come to-day. 
By whose authority are you here?" Uncle John 
Vassar replied, " I am agent of the American 
Tract Society, and I have passes from President 
Lincoln through all the Army of the Potomac; and 
now, general, do you love the Lord Jesus Christ? 
We can have a little season of prayer right here." 
And in a brief time Uncle John was back with the 
boys in a rapturous prayer-meeting for the conver- 
sion of sinners and the comfort of Christian sol- 
diers. On one occasion he was captured by the 
Southern troops and brought before the famous 
cavalry general, Stuart. When the general asked 



44 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



him who he was, he replied, " I am John Vassar, 
the agent of the American Tract Society and the 
servant of the Lord Jesus Christ." " Oh, yes," said 
General Stuart, " I know that good old Society, and 
we need have no fear of one of its agents." " But, 
general," continued Uncle John, " do you know and 
love the Lord Jesus? " At this point one of the sol- 
diers who was guarding him said, " I think, gen- 
eral, we had better send this man back across the 
lines, for, if we do not, we shall have a prayer-meet- 
ing from here to Richmond." 

Vassar often won souls to God by the very bold- 
ness and daring of the attempt. He went into the 
Parker House, in Boston, one day, and saw in the 
parlor a very fashionably dressed woman. He went 
up to her boldly, and yet with the utmost deference 
and politeness, and asked if she loved Jesus. She 
was a worldly woman, who had been utterly indif- 
ferent to Christianity; but in five minutes, to her 
own astonishment, she was kneeling by his side in 
that hotel parlor, sobbing over her sins. When her 
husband came back a little while later she told him 
about it, and he angrily said, " Why didn't you send 
him about his business? " She answered, " Ah, my 
dear, if you had been here you would have thought 
he was about his business." May God enable us, 
every one who names the name of Jesus Christ, to 
show forth something of that same holy boldness 
that will make us soul winners wherever we go. 



SPUNK AND SPIRITUALITY. 



45 



We need this same boldness of spirit to insure 
the safety of our own souls. We are assured in the 
Bible that we shall not keep our religious experi- 
ence without a struggle. We are urged to put on 
the whole armor of God, because we shall have to 
wrestle with many enemies and many temptations. 
We are told that boldness on our part is an essen- 
tial condition of victory. The devil goes about like 
a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, but 
when bravely and boldly resisted, he flees away. 

A good story is told of an honest old commodore 
in the American navy, who commanded a blockade 
squadron in Southern waters during the Civil War. 
A fine looking, well mannered man came to him 
one day, at a time when no vessels had been able 
to pass the blockade for weeks, and introduced him- 
self as the representative of certain firms abroad 
whose commercial need for cotton was desperate. 
After explaining this point fully, he made an open 
offer to the commodore of fifty thousand dollars if 
he would manage to let one single ship laden with 
cotton pass the blockade. He even opened his 
wallet, and spread the crisp bills out upon the table 
to emphasize the amount. 

The commodore listened with an indifferent air, 
and said nothing until the man was through with 
his offer. Then he answered, still indifferently, 
" The thing is absolutely impossible, sir. Good 
morning," and he bowed him out. So little indigna- 



4 6 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



tion had he shown that, a week later, the persevering 
agent came back with a new offer. " Commodore," 
he said, " I am authorized to offer you even more 
than I did. If you will do as I ask, here are one 
hundred thousand dollars which I will leave upon 
the table;" and he began to take a roll of bills out 
of his wallet as before. 

This time, however, the old sailor was not indif- 
ferent. His brow darkened and his eye flashed light- 
ning as, leaping forward, he seized the briber by the 
neck and kicked him out of his cabin, shouting as 
he did so, " Get out of here, you scoundrel ! You 
are coming too near my price ! " Any man may be 
sure that if he dallies with the tempter, and is in- 
different, and does not resist him with boldness, the 
enemy of souls will make offers again and again, 
until he gets inside his armor. The way of safety 
is the way of bold and open antagonism to evil. 

I am sure that some are staying away from Jesus, 
and from open fellowship with him, simply because 
they are cowed by the enemy, and lack the courage 
to make just one bold effort to break their bondage 
and come to Christ. I wish I knew how to speak 
the right word to some soul that needs but just a 
little to bring it inside the door of the kingdom. I 
Was reading somebody's description the other day 
of that scene of Paul before Agrippa. The writer 
said that Agrippa was no doubt entirely honest and 
sincere when, in a sudden moment of deep feeling, 



SPUNK AND SPIRITUALITY. 



47 



he exclaimed to Paul, " Almost thou persuadest me 
to be a Christian ! " He thought Paul and Agrippa 
were very near to shaking hands before Festus and 
all the court at that moment ; so near, that their fail- 
ure to do so on the spot makes that one of the most 
tragical moments in all the world. A tragical mo- 
ment only second to the one you will have now if 
you feel what Agrippa felt, and say what Agrippa 
said, and then go away and do what Agrippa did. 
" Almost " is surely the most tragic word that is 
ever heard uttered on earth or in hell. And yet both 
earth and hell are full of it. Almost! Almost! 
Almost! An athlete runs for the prize, and he al- 
most touches the winning post. A marksman 
shoots at the target, and he almost hits it. A run- 
ner leaps for his life over a roaring flood, and he 
almost clears the chasm. A ship is almost within 
the harbor when a storm suddenly strikes her. The 
five foolish virgins were almost in time. Almost! 
Agrippa was almost a Christian and a hero of the 
faith. And so it is with many another. You, per- 
haps, are almost a Christian, almost ready to step 
over the line in open discipleship to Christ. But 
will you ? Or will you lose the race ? Will you miss 
the target ? Will you fail in the leap, and be caught 
in the swirl of the torrent that sweeps you down? 
At the very gate of the harbor shall you be driven 
back to sea and lost ? It is for you to say. 



V. 



The Life that will Stand a 
Thousand Years. * 

"Your life is hid with Christ in God." — Colossians 3: 3. 

A thousand years ago a life was closed in Eng- 
land that has been a marvelous influence for good 
on the English-speaking race, and through that race 
on all mankind. It has been a thousand years since 
Alfred, whom we call the Great King, and with 
reason, ceased to walk with men upon the earth, and 
yet he was never so alive, never so powerful in those 
streams of influence he set in motion, as to-day. In 
a peculiar sense he was the creator of the Anglo- 
Saxon race. It is thus appropriate to recall to the 
mind of the present generation the characteristics 
of that splendid figure who stood at the beginning 
of the great English-speaking institutions which we 
know to-day. 

I have neither the time nor the disposition to 
give a biographical sketch of King Alfred. It is 



* Preached in memory of King Alfred the Great, Sunday, 
October 27, 1901. 



THE LIFE THAT WILL STAND. 49 



rather my purpose to call attention to those great 
and striking elements of character which have given 
this man a thousand years of ever increasing power 
in the world, after he has gone forth from it. There 
is in every wholesome, healthy nature the desire to 
make its mark upon its time; to do something that 
will be so helpful to humanity that its influence will 
last after the man himself has ceased to live among 
men. Here is a man who has lived a thousand years 
and has grown greater in the race. Surely it cannot 
but be interesting and profitable for us to study the 
traits of character which suggest the secret of that 
earthly immortality. 

There are three things that stand out for me in 
the life of King Alfred that seem worthy of our 
earnest study. Without either of them he could 
never have been the man he was, nor could he have 
lived to this day with the growing influence he has 
in the world. The first of these is his hardihood and 
endurance. He had the soul of a wrestler. His 
ambition for himself, his ideal of life, was not self- 
indulgence, not ease, but ceaseless struggle and ef- 
fort for achievement. He says himself, " No wise 
man should desire a soft life, if he careth for any 
worship here of the world, or for eternal life after 
this life is ended." Alfred felt that for a man to be 
really great, either here or hereafter, he must win 
his greatness at the price of great struggle ; he must 
not fear to give and take hard knocks ; he must get 



5o 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



strength through great toil and exercise; his shoul- 
ders must broaden under heavy burdens; his intel- 
lect must develop and strengthen under the pressure 
of severe problems ; and it was to this kind of a life 
that he gave himself. It was a life full of daring; 
courageous, arduous, and patient. 

The stories that have come down to us through 
the thousand years of English history show us* that 
King Alfred was a man who was irrepressible by 
defeat, a man whom no humiliation could thwart 
or turn from his purpose. During all the early 
years of Alfred's time England was beset and har- 
assed and ofttimes overrun by the Danes. On one 
occasion, while Alfred was residing at Chippenham, 
on the River Avon, Guthrum, a Danish leader, at- 
tacked this town at night in the middle of winter, 
and the king had to flee for his life. He wandered 
through the country for some time in disguise. It 
is related by the chroniclers of that day that the king 
sought shelter in the house of a swineherd. The 
wife of his humble host, being engaged in her 
homely duties, requested the stranger to turn some 
cakes, which she was baking, to prevent their burn- 
ing. The thoughts of Alfred were far away, con- 
sidering the best means of defeating his enemies. 
The cakes were burned, and the woman, on discover- 
ing his neglect, soundly berated her guest, and slap- 
ped his jaws, saying that he would be glad enough 
to eat the cakes, but was too lazy to turn them. 



THE LIFE THAT WILL STAND. 51 



Alfred bore it with meekness, sustained by his devo- 
tion to his greater purpose. 

On another occasion, in the disguise of a harper, he 
boldly visited the camp of this same Danish leader, 
Guthrum. His enemies were captivated with his 
music and kept him there for several days, during 
which time he overheard them discussing their plans 
of further attack on the Saxons. Quietly leaving 
their camp, he joined his friends. An army was 
quickly gotten together, and, marching against the 
Danes, with the knowledge he had gained while 
among them, a great battle was fought, in which 
he was completely victorious. 

These are but suggestive incidents which show 
the character of the man. Like our own Washing- 
ton, to whom King Alfred has been compared, an 
enemy had no reason to rejoice because he had de- 
feated him once, or twice, or thrice; for so long as 
Alfred lived, his courage and resources caused him 
to be counted as a worthy foe. I am sure that it is 
important in our own day to make much of this trait 
of hardihood and endurance. Only the other day, in 
New York city, a man went into court protesting 
against the reservation of two thousand dollars from 
his income of six thousand dollars a year, from an 
estate left him by his father, his creditors desiring 
that this amount be paid annually on his debts. 
That protest was a very remarkable paper. In it 
this man stated that he had been brought up in idle- 



52 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



ness ; that his father had never taught him any trade 
or profession; neither had he disciplined him in 
habits of industry, nor given him any knowledge of 
business. Instead, his childhood and youth and 
young manhood had been indolent and self-indul- 
gent, and his father had supplied him with abundant 
means for a wasteful and extravagant life. In con- 
sequence, he averred that it was not possible for him 
to live on four thousand dollars a year, supporting 
a wife and child, and begged the court not to thrust 
him into new debts by holding back two thousand 
dollars a year to pay to his old creditors. 

Surely, nothing could more clearly illustrate our 
theme. It is not only folly, it is a sin and a shame 
and a moral crime against society to bring up chil- 
dren like that. Such people are the worst kind of 
paupers. No parent can do a greater wrong to his 
children than to bring boys or girls up to manhood 
or womanhood with no self-reliance, with no just 
idea of the true purpose of human life, with no sense 
of responsibility for the life which they live, and with 
no capability of making an adequate return for what 
they receive from the world. The young man who 
stands at twenty-five, strong-bodied, clear-headed, 
well educated, with good morals, and a clean, whole- 
some conscience, ready to take hold of the work of 
life with self-relying energy, trusting in God and his 
own right arm, backed by his own common sense, 
is a rich man compared with him who stands soft 



THE LIFE THAT WILL STAND. 53 



and mushy and helpless, a thing to be petted and 
coddled and fussed over, and with no head for any- 
thing, even though he have an income of many thou- 
sands of dollars a year. Let us have a generation 
of young men and young women who have a con- 
tempt for a life of ease and self-indulgence, and who 
have a self-reliance, a love for achievement through 
struggle, an enthusiasm for daring and hard work 
such as animated King Alfred, and animates to-day 
our own President Roosevelt, and we shall have a 
nation born anew, and shall rise to a new epoch in 
national greatness. 

Our next thought about King Alfred is his love of 
knowledge, and his thorough devotion to personal 
culture. After he had gained his final victories over 
the Danes, he gave every spare hour of his life to the 
development of his own mind and heart, and to the 
encouragement of education and culture among his 
people. Knowledge, to King Alfred, was never a 
matter of mere personal comfort and enjoyment. 
He sought it, first of all, because he was hungry for 
it, but with the distinct purpose to convey the knowl- 
edge acquired to his people. He sent intelligent men 
to Russia, to J erusalem, and even, it is said, to India, 
to obtain geographical and other learning. When 
you remember that this was many hundreds of years 
before the invention of steam, and that travel was 
slow and uncertain and dangerous, it will be hard 
to match such enterprise in modern scientific ex- 



54 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



peditions. King Alfred's court was the home of 
many distinguished scholars. He was the founder 
of Oxford University, which began its glorious his- 
tory in the year 886. The first law in the 
world — except among the early Hebrews, who re- 
ceived it directly from God — demanding the com- 
pulsory education of children, was promulgated by 
King Alfred, who compelled the nobles to have their 
children educated, he himself providing books for 
their instruction. King Alfred himself translated 
into Saxon " iEsop's Fables," Bede's " Latin His- 
tory of the Anglo-Saxon Church," and the Psalms. 

King Alfred's great friend, Bishop Asser, tells us 
that Alfred measured the time by candles, so as not 
to neglect any of his duties. These candles were 
made all of one length, burning one inch in twenty 
minutes. He divided his day into three parts — one 
to business of state, a second eight hours to the pur- 
suit of knowledge and religious exercises, and a 
third to sleep, meals, and recreation. We need al- 
ways to lay emphasis on personal culture. The 
temptation is ever with us to ease up on hard study 
and that serious mental work which gives fruitful 
and worthy results in the development of the mind. 
The human mind is like the farmer's soil. I go up 
through the country in the summer time and I see 
two farms lying side by side. They are of the same 
general quality; the character of the soil is the 
same; one is naturally about as productive as the 



THE LIFE THAT WILL STAND. 55 



other. But one field will yield three tons of hay to 
the acre, while the farm adjoining it rarely yields as 
much as one ton. One man lives in comfort, and 
his farm is supporting his family splendidly and 
giving him something to lay up for old age; while 
the other is almost starving on a farm which has 
just as good capabilities as his neighbor's. You 
know what makes the difference. One man works 
his farm; he studies to know how best to cultivate 
it ; he brings to it the kind of culture and the sort of 
fertilizer that will make it do its best work, and it 
responds in abundant harvests. The other works 
his farm in a shiftless sort of a way ; things go from 
hand to mouth, and there is no- systematic, faith- 
ful attempt to make the farm do its best. 

So it is that men deal with their intellectual farms. 
God never yet gave a man an intellectual field so 
rich and fruitful that it did not need earnest and 
honest cultivation to bring forth its best harvests 
for the blessing of humanity. It ought to be a great 
ambition with us to make the best of our minds : to 
compel ourselves to some plan of personal culture 
that will keep us in fellowship with the best books, 
the loftiest minds, and the noblest thinking, not only 
of our own time, but of the years that are gone. 
The busiest of us may get a chance every week, and 
every day, to take at least our cup of cold water from 
those great living springs of mental vigor that are 
the tonics which will keep the intellectual life strong 



56 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



and buoyant. In this day, when we make so much 
of specialists; when a man is not merely a doctor, 
but an eye doctor, or an ear doctor, or a throat doc- 
tor only; when a man is not simply a lawyer, but is 
so subdivided that he is only a patent lawyer, or a 
criminal lawyer, or a real-estate lawyer ; in this day 
when, as never before, men are specializing them- 
selves, and pouring all the water of their energies 
down the one flume, to turn the one wheel that is 
to give power to their specialty, we need to recall 
the great truth that we must be something more than 
bright and sharp and acute in the one thing we 
do to make a living. The doctor must be more than 
a doctor. The lawyer must be more than a lawyer. 
The preacher must be more than a preacher. The 
merchant must be more than a merchant. The 
teacher must be more than a teacher. The railroad 
man must be more than a master of trains. This 
very specializing of life makes it important that we 
should all hold ourselves to such a devotion to 
knowledge, to such a culture of wider wisdom than 
that which is needed to use in earning our bread, 
that we shall have an overflow of intellectual vigor 
— a flowering of cultured, cultivated manhood and 
womanhood, so that, like Joseph's bough, it shall 
run over the wall to bless the world outside and be- 
yond ourselves. 

But I have left the greatest until the last. For, 
after all, the supreme characteristic of King Alfred, 



THE LIFE THAT WILL STAND. 57 



that alone which made it possible for him to do the 
great deeds he did, and leave the world such a herit- 
age from his labors, was the fact of his genuine per- 
sonal piety. Back of his hardihood and endurance; 
back of his courageous willingness to struggle and 
fight for the thing that was good ; back of his love of 
books and culture, was the fact that he was a good 
man to his heart's core, that he loved God sincerely, 
and that he trusted in God with a faith as simple and 
sweet as a child's. Listen to these great words : 

" Those men," said Alfred, " are the freest from 
care, whether about the anxieties of this life or of 
the next, who are fast in God; but in whatever de- 
gree they are asunder from God, in the same degree 
are they worried and harassed, both in mind and in 
body." In that sentence you have the great secret 
of King Alfred's life. He was " Fast in God." 
Dwelling in that fastness, holding hidden com- 
munion with his Divine Lord, he welded together a 
kingdom which has grown into the great England 
of to-day, and the institutions he founded have, like 
a mighty intellectual and moral banyan-tree, bent 
their branches to the earth, running roots under the 
sea, to come up not only in the United States and 
in Canada, but in Australia and India, and on all 
the islands of the sea which have felt the touch of 
English institutions. O my friends, if you would 
build a life that will stand a thousand years, you 
must drill it deep down in the Rock of Ages. It must 



53 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



stand upon the foundation of goodness. The life 
that is " hid with Christ in God " is the life that no 
earthly storm can ever overturn. In the glitter and 
fascination of worldly success it often seems to us 
that wealth and fame and pleasure outshine the 
plain, simple graces of the good. But when the mo- 
mentary glamour has disappeared we know that it is 
not so. W e know that to be good is infinitely better 
than to be famous, or rich, or gay. Our lives must 
be built upon the foundation of goodness. Here is 
the first requisite ; all other things are second. Obey 
God here at the beginning, and God will give you 
the best things all the way through for your career. 
Christ has given us his eternal pledge for that. 
Down through the ages comes his ringing promise : 
" Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his right- 
eousness, and all these things shall be added unto 
you." 

And may God give us the humility and wisdom 
to learn the great lessons King Alfred has to teach 
us ! Then what the poet wishes for the great leaders 
of national life may come with no less potent influ- 
ence to us in our own struggle : 

" Such was he : his work is done ; 
But, while the races of mankind endure, 

Let his great example stand 

Colossal, seen of every land, 
And keep the soldier firm, the statesman pure." 



VI. 



The King's Insurance Company. 

" No good thing will he withhold from them that walk up- 
rightly." — Psalm 84: 11. 

Not another insurance company in the world will 
offer a policy like that. If you go to the different 
companies, you will find that they have a great many 
tempting propositions to meet the varying needs and 
tastes of mankind; but you will not find an agent 
who will offer to sell a policy to supply all human 
needs and give every good thing that a man may 
require. That is a policy you cannot buy of this 
world's insurance companies at any price. But God 
has an insurance company, and through his infinite 
grace and mercy I am one of his agents. And I 
want to recall your attention to the gracious pro- 
visions offered by this company, the headquarters 
of which are in heaven, but which is doing an ever- 
increasing business on earth. 

One of the first exploits of a big business corpora- 
tion is the amount of its paid-up capital. Well, I 
am willing to talk about that. The president of this 
company is the King of kings, and all the resources 



6o 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



of him who made the heavens and the earth are back 
of every policy issued. He who stored away all the 
gold in the mountains, who planted all the diamonds 
in South Africa, who owns the flocks upon a thou- 
sand hills — his wealth is all staked to guarantee the 
proposition set forth in the policy which is issued to 
the Christian. It is impossible to compute the paid- 
up capital. Paul was only able to sum it up by say- 
ing that the riches of God in Christ Jesus were un- 
searchable. 

Another important item in an insurance company 
is that it shall be able to show good assets. There 
is no doubt at this point with the King's Insurance 
Company. All the riches of God are abiding and 
certain. There is no wildcat currency in the treas- 
ury of heaven. Business is done there in " gold 
tried in the fire," and its securities are not of the 
kind that " fade away." The liabilities of this in- 
surance company are very large, because they com- 
prise all the needs and longings of the human heart ; 
but the assets are abundant to meet these needs. I 
notice that all insurance companies are glad to show 
a large surplus over liabilities. But there are none 
that can show such a surplus as can the agents of 
the King's Insurance Company. Paul declares that 
God is " able to do exceeding abundantly above all 
that we ask or think." Again he says, " My God 
shall supply all your need." And again, " We know 
that all things work together for good to them that 



THE KING'S INSURANCE COMPANY. 61 

love God." And still again he says that we as Chris- 
tians are " more than conquerors through him that 
loved us." All these expressions indicate the magni- 
tude of the surplus over liabilities. 

The conditions of this policy are very simple: 
They are repentance and faith. The same condi- 
tions are extended to all, rich or poor, learned or 
unlearned, high or low. There is one simple, 
straightforward proposition which requires " re- 
pentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord 
Jesus Christ." 

I want to call your attention to some of the special 
reasons why, in addition to any other insurance you 
may carry — whether it be fire insurance, or accident 
insurance, or endowment or life insurance — you still 
have exactly the same reason for insuring in this 
company. The King's Insurance Company is not 
in any sense a competitor with the other companies, 
for whatever insurance you may carry in the others, 
you have the same need for insuring here. 

And first, this is the oldest insurance company in 
the world, and has been in successful operation for 
nearly six thousand years on this globe. Noah, and 
Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and Joseph, and 
Moses, and Joshua, and Caleb, and David, and 
Elijah, and Elisha, and Isaiah, and Daniel were all 
conspicuous and notable policy-holders, who took 
great interest in calling the world's attention to this 
company. 



62 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



Again, the King's company is the only one that 
insures against the loss by fire in the great conflagra- 
tion on the Judgment Day. No other company will 
listen to you in an appeal for a policy having that 
guarantee. But the King's Insurance Company 
pledges itself with all the wealth and power of its 
great treasury to protect you when the world is on 
fire. 

Also, this is the only company that does business 
in insuring against wreckage on the River of Death. 
Many marine insurance companies will insure 
against wreckage in crossing the Atlantic or Pacific 
oceans, but these all fight shy of business connected 
with traffic on that dread river from which no trav- 
eler returns. But the King's Insurance Company 
has no hesitation. David, who was a joyous policy- 
holder, comforted himself frequently by recalling 
the terms of his policy : " Yea, though I walk 
through the valley of the shadow of death, I will 
fear no evil : for thou art with me ; thy rod and thy 
staff they comfort me." 

In the fourth place, this is the only company that 
pays a daily indemnity, and often an hourly in- 
demnity. It is also the only company that pays 
an indemnity in health as well as in sickness, 
and charges nothing extra in either case. The 
shut-in Christian gets his rich compensation and 
support from the King's treasury, but he also has 
benefits when he recovers and goes abroad, and in 



THE KING'S INSURANCE COMPANY. 63 



addition to large wages, has constant daily benefits 
which cause his cup to run over with gratitude and 
thanksgiving. 

There are a great many other important charac- 
teristics about this company. Its policies never run 
out so long as we abide by the conditions. I have 
known a great many men who had insured largely 
in other companies, who, when they grew old or fell 
ill, and were unable to earn the premiums required, 
were compelled to let their insurance lapse. But 
no policy ever yet lapsed in the King's Insurance 
Company, except through the wilful fault of the 
policy-holder. Christ pays the price of the policy 
for us. What we do is to accept it by repentance 
and faith. And though we may fall ill and be sick 
and weak, or may grow old and feeble, we shall lose 
none of our insurance that way. The great loving 
Christ keeps the policy paid up, so long as our hearts 
are obedient to him. 

I have been in two or three insurance companies 
which seemed sound when I went in, but after a 
few years the transfer of management into unsafe 
hands finally wrecked the company, and I have lost 
many hundreds of dollars in that way. But no man 
will ever lose by change of management in the 
King's Insurance Company. The management will 
never change. It is " the same yesterday, and to- 
day, and for ever." 

The policy itself is a beautiful thing. There never 



6 4 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



was any earthly engraver able to prepare so magni- 
ficent a policy as this. The portrait of the " One 
altogether lovely " is stamped on it, and the policy 
and portrait are set in the thoughts and imaginations 
and affections of the policy-holder, so that he may 
keep his eyes on it and find comfort in it in every 
time of discouragement and trial. 

Sometimes a man hides his policy, or is led away 
and forgets it, and does not appreciate its worth. 
Dr. Wayland Hoyt tells the story of a man who had 
in his trunk a bundle of bonds. His father had 
brought them from a distant part of the country, and 
had told the son that the bonds were valuable and 
would be paid at maturity. Soon after the father 
died. The son took one of these bonds to a village 
banker. But the banker refused to negotiate it, say- 
ing that he knew nothing about it; a great many 
bonds were valueless ; these might be. So this son 
and heir let the bonds lie in his trunk for years. He 
was poor. He often had a hard struggle to get on. 
But he had so little belief in the value of the bonds 
that he never again tried to use them. But one day 
the son had a visitor from the State in which the 
bonds were issued. Simply as a matter of curiosity, 
the son showed the visitor the bonds. The moment 
the stranger saw them he exclaimed, " Why, man, 
they are worth their face and all the accumulated 
interest in gold. Send them to New Orleans and 
they will be paid." It was even so. By w T ay of ex- 



THE KING'S INSURANCE COMPANY. 



65 



periment, one of the bonds was sent to New Or- 
leans, and the proceeds came back by return mail. 
Then the man sat down and counted his bonds, and 
found himself possessed of ten thousand dollars. 
Poor he had all the time thought himself, yet, all 
the time, he really was possessed of a very comfort- 
able sum. 

It is a sad thing that some people who have been 
policy-holders in the King's Insurance Company in 
a nominal way, have not yet come to appreciate their 
privileges in drawing daily benefits to gladden every 
hour of life. They feel that sometime, when they 
are very ill and are ready to die, or at the judg- 
ment, the policy in the King's company may be 
worth having: but their thoughts about it are very 
vague and indefinite. They are much like the young 
fellow who kept his father's bonds. He had a 
vague feeling that they might be of value some 
time, but got very little present comfort out of it. 
But how different it was when he knew that he 
might cash them, and get gold to live on now. So, 
infinite treasures of joy are open to many who are 
only nominal Christians, if they would but put forth 
their hands and draw with reverent faith the daily 
benefits guaranteed in their policy. Paul says in 
his letter to the Ephesians, speaking of Jesus, " In 
whom we have redemption " — not will have at some 
future time, at death, or the judgment. No, it is in- 
finitely more real and present than that — " In whom 



66 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



we have redemption through his blood, the forgive- 
ness of sins, according to the riches of his grace." 

There is a remarkable thing about this com- 
pany — all its policy-holders speak well of it. Many 
a man has said to me about certain insurance com- 
panies, " I am greatly disappointed with my policy, 
but I am going to stay in the company because I 
have already put so much in I cannot afford to lose 
it." They do not stay with the company because 
they like it, or because they think it has done well 
by them, but because they lose less to stay with it 
than to get out. But the policy-holders in the 
Kings Insurance Company never talk that way. 
Here is one company all of whose policy-holders 
speak well of it. See what Moses says about it after 
forty years of trial in the wilderness. He calls the 
people before him, and emphasizes the fact that God 
has fulfilled their policy to the very letter. I can 
see him with his great patriarchal beard, white as 
snow, as he shouts in the ears of the multitude, 
" And in the wilderness, where thou hast seen how 
that the Lord thy God bare thee, as a man doth bear 
his son, in all the way that ye went * * * who 
went in the way before you, to search you out a 
place to pitch your tents in, in fire by night, to show 
you by what way ye should go, and in a cloud by 
day." 

After Moses was dead, God gave Joshua a won- 
derful policy. It had some strong provisions in it. 



THE KING'S INSURANCE COMPANY. 



67 



" As I was with Moses/' said God, " so I will be 
with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee." 
Well, the wonderful years of battle and struggle 
went on, and the time came when Joshua was to 
deliver up his stewardship. In a remarkable ad- 
dress he reviewed the story of his career and of 
God's dealing. Beloved by all, the venerable man 
gave his testimony to God's fulfillment of that in- 
surance policy. He said : " I am old and stricken 
in age : and ye have seen all that the Lord your God 
hath done unto all these nations because of you ; for 
the Lord your God is he that hath fought for you. 
* * * And, behold, this day I am going the way 
of all the earth : and ye know in all your hearts and 
in all your souls, that not one thing hath failed of 
all the good things which the Lord your God spake 
concerning you : all are come to pass unto you, and 
not one thing hath failed thereof." 

And that is the way they all talk. David never 
could say enough concerning the way the Lord ful- 
filled his promises. And the author of the Psalm 
from which our text is taken has just been looking 
over his policy again until his heart is so full of 
thanksgiving that it runs over, and he cries out, " A 
day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had 
rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than 
to dwell in the tents of wickedness. For the Lord 
God is a sun and shield : the Lord will give grace 
and glory: no good thing will he withhold from 



63 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



them that walk uprightly. O Lord of hosts, blessed 
is the man that trusteth in thee." 

If you come down to the New Testament times, 
you will find the policy-holders just as enthusiastic. 
Hear Peter exclaiming, " Blessed be the God and 
father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according 
to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto 
a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ 
from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and 
undefiled, and that fadeth not away." Peter was 
an impulsive fellow, and what a black eye he would 
have given a company that had failed to live up to 
its promises ! But, writing to his friends, he rejoices 
with them in the policy that has come to them 
through his agency ; and speaking to them of Jesus, 
he says, " Whom having not seen, ye love ; in whom, 
though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice 
with joy unspeakable and full of glory : receiving the 
end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls." 
Hear Paul in his last love-letter to Timothy, as he 
sums up the results of his policy : " I am now ready 
to be offered, and the time of my departure is at 
hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished 
my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there 
is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which 
the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that 
day : and not to me only, but unto all them also that 
love his appearing." 

And since the days of the early apostles and mar- 



THE KING'S INSURANCE COMPANY. 



69 



tyrs the world has been filling with policy-holders 
of the King's Insurance Company, who have borne 
glad testimony that it gives richer returns than the 
human heart is able to understand, or even to ask 
or think in advance. What sweet words the poets 
and hymn writers have had to say about their policy 
in the King's company! Madame Guyon sang — 

" My Lord, how full of sweet content 
I pass my years of banishment ! 
Where'er I dwell, I dwell with thee, 
In heaven, in earth, or on the sea. 
To me remains nor place nor time ; 
My country is in every clime : 
I can be calm and free from care 
On any shore, since God is there." 

Hear Charles Wesley's exulting words : 

" Tis Love ! 'tis Love ! thou diedst for me ! 

I hear thy whisper in my heart; 
The morning breaks, the shadows flee; 

Pure, universal love thou art : 
To me, to all, thy bowels move; 
Thy nature and thy name is Love. 
******* 

" I know thee, Saviour, who thou art, 
Jesus, the feeble sinner's Friend; 
Nor wilt thou with the night depart, 
But stay and love me to the end : 
Thy mercies never shall remove; 
Thy nature and thy name is Love." 

Only one thing more, and that is, if you are not 



7o 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



insured, you may be to-day. The Company will re- 
ceive you. Paul says, " This is a faithful saying, 
and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came 
into the world to save sinners." Jesus himself says 
that he " came to seek and to save that which was 
lost." He also says, " Him that cometh to me I will 
in no wise cast out." You may come just as you 
are. " If we confess our sins, he is faithful and 
just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from 
all unrighteousness." It is the free gift of God, and 
you must make application at the throne of mercy 
to the King of kings himself. He has promised that 
if you will put in your application in the name of 
Jesus Christ, who bore our sins in his own body on 
the cross, he will never refuse you. " Now is the 
accepted time." " Seek ye first the kingdom of 
God," and all the other things of life that are good 
for you to have will be added unto it. Heaven and 
earth may pass away, but the guarantee of our text 
shall not fail : " No good thing will he withhold 
from them that walk uprightly." 



VII. 



The Flint-Face of Jesus. 

" Therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I 
shall not be ashamed." — Isaiah 50: 7. 

" He steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem." — Luke 9: 
51. 

Oliver Cromwell's men had a habit, just before 
the battle, of watching the face of their general, and 
then, with a feeling of awe and sublimity, they 
would whisper to each other, " See, he has on his 
battle face." When they saw that set, iron face, 
in which determination reigned supreme, they felt 
that defeat was impossible. Decision of character 
is one of the greatest forces among men. The Bible 
declares that not even God can do anything for a 
man who is " unstable as water." The man who 
makes up his mind, who sets his will at work, who 
determines on a course of action and then follows 
it as the day-star of his hope and life unto the end 
— he is the man who conquers. 

I have chosen this prophecy concerning Jesus, and 
the record of its fulfillment, as a theme for our study 
because it embodies a great lesson which we need to 
learn. We are likely to think about Jesus only on 



72 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



the side of the tenderness of heart and mercifulness 
of conduct which characterized his great mission. 
We are in danger of forgetting that in carrying out 
his love and mercy, it was essential that he should 
bring into action the noblest courage and the most 
invincible determination that have ever been exhib- 
ited by man. In forgetting this, we are likely to 
forget its essential importance to ourselves. When 
we think of Christian qualities we are prone to put 
the emphasis, as we should, upon kindness and 
mercy; but we must not forget that to carry out a 
life of kindness and mercy requires often the flint- 
face — the face set to go forward, and held there by 
a will that, under God's grace and help, will not bend 
or break. 

It will help us, I think, to remember that Jesus 
always had this flint, set face when he was facing 
duty which meant discomfort and hardship. He 
never excused himself from going on the lonely, 
hard path. If he had an uncomfortable duty to do, 
he set his face relentlessly toward it. He never 
hid from himself the cross that was before him, and 
it is very unwise for us to do so. Courage is never 
obtained by shutting your eyes so that you may not 
see the danger before you. True courage comes 
from knowing and estimating the danger, and then 
facing it with honest, manly purpose. It is foolish 
for us to shut our eyes to the fact of the coming 
death and judgment that is before every one of us. 



THE FLINT-FACE OF JESUS. 



73 



Rather is it wise and brave that we fit ourselves to 
meet them with joyous face. 

Chevalier Gerard de Kampais was a very rich as 
well as a very proud man. He built a magnificent 
castle, and when it was opened had a great recep- 
tion, and all the rich and noble among his neighbors 
were invited to the banquet. At the conclusion of 
the sumptuous feast, his guests made speech after 
speech, in which the chevalier, their host, was lauded 
to the skies, and was told that he was the most for- 
tunate man alive. As the chevalier loved flattery, 
he was delighted with these addresses. 

One among the guests, however, was a different 
type of man. After all the rest had spoken, he 
quietly arose and uttered a very singular observa- 
tion : " Sir Knight, in order that your felicity should 
be complete, you require but one thing; but this is 
a very important item." 

" And what thing is that? " demanded the knight, 
opening wide his eyes. 

" One of your doors must be walled up," replied 
his guest. 

At this strange rejoinder several of the guests be- 
gan to laugh, and the expression on Chevalier Ger- 
ard's face seemed to say," This man has gone mad." 
Wishing, however, to have the clue to this enigma, 
he continued, " But what door do you mean? " 

" I mean that through which you will one day be 
carried to your grave," replied the other. 



74 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



The words of wisdom struck home to the hearts 
of both guests and host, and the proud knight was 
caused by them to reflect most seriously. They 
made him remember the vanity of all earthly things, 
and henceforth he set his face toward a noble and 
generous life. He no longer thought only of the 
perishable treasure in which he had once gloried, 
but made such good use of his riches that he came 
to the end of his life in great peace, blessing and 
blessed by all who knew him. 

It is not possible for us to set our faces toward 
death and eternity with peace unless we have a right 
idea of God. Jesus thought of death as going to 
the Father, and if we have that thought of God, it 
will rob death of its terrors. 

A king was once sitting with his warriors round 
the fire in a dark barn. It was night and winter. 
Suddenly a little bird flew in at an open door, and 
flew out again at another. The king said, " This 
bird is like man in the world ; it flew in from dark- 
ness, and out again to darkness, and was not long in 
the warmth and light." To which one of his oldest 
warriors replied, " King, even in the dark the bird 
is not lost, but finds its nest." Neither shall we be 
lost in the dark if our faces are set toward our 
Heavenly Father, who is light, and in whom is no 
darkness at all. Then we shall be able to say, as did 
Stephen in the hour of his martyrdom, " Lord Jesus, 
receive my spirit." 



THE FLINT-FACE OF JESUS. 



75 



A traveling man who had to be away from home 
a great deal, would often send his wife a message 
saying on what train she could expect him, and often 
would put in a little word for his boy Arthur, some- 
times saying, " Tell Arthur I shall sleep with him 
to-night." But one day when the father was away 
from home, little Arthur lay hot and feverish in his 
mother's arms, sick unto death. " Don't ky, 
mamma," he said, " I shall seep wiv Dod, 'oo know. 
Send a teledraf to heaven, and tell Dod I sail seep 
wiv him to-night." The child had the right idea 
of God, and it is easy to set our faces toward the 
future, if we feel sure that the Father-God is our 
own, and will be with us under all circumstances. 

Christ set his face toward the cross and went 
steadfastly toward it, not with any feeling of 
stoicism, to endure suffering with his teeth gritted 
because he could not help himself, but buoyantly and 
cheerfully, because of the supreme love that had 
caused him to make up his mind to give himself as 
a ransom for sinners. I think modern preaching 
does not emphasize this great fact as much as it 
ought; for, after all, we have no Gospel to preach 
that does not cluster about the atonement made by 
Jesus Christ on the cross. I think we do not let it 
stay in our imagination and arouse our gratitude and 
inspire our love as frequently as it would be good 
for us to do. There is nothing to which we can 



7 6 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



really compare the marvelous love of Jesus in dying 
to redeem us from our sins. 

An English clergyman was once preaching to a 
congregation of young people. During the dis- 
course he narrated the story of a Russian nobleman 
who, with his wife and child, was driving through 
a forest. Soon they became aware by the frantic 
way in which the horses struggled and strained at 
the traces as they sped along at a furious pace, that 
the animals feared some calamity. As the fright- 
ened steeds tore through a ravine and up a high hill, 
those in the carriage looked back fearfully and across 
the white fields of snow on the hill they had left, 
they saw a black moving mass, and knew that a pack 
of ferocious wolves was following them. Every 
nerve was strained to reach the village, still a few 
miles distant; but the wolves drew nearer and 
nearer, and at last the coachman cut away the traces 
and set two of the leaders free, just as the wolves 
were approaching. The hungry pack diverted its 
attention from the carriage to the unfortunate horses 
thus set free. They were speedily torn in pieces, and 
then, with their appetites whetted, the wolves con- 
tinued their pursuit in full cry after the carriage, 
now some distance ahead. The coachman again felt 
the wolves approaching, but he could not sacrifice the 
two remaining horses. So he nobly volunteered to 
sacrifice himself, and imploring his master to take 
his place on the box as the only hope of saving his 



THE FLINT-FACE OF JESUS. 



77 



wife and daughter, the devoted servant descended 
and stood in the middle of the road, attempting 
vainly, as he well knew, revolver in hand, to bar the 
progress of the pack. The carriage dashed into the 
village. The nobleman sallied forth at once with a 
crowd of armed villagers in quest of the noble- 
hearted servant, whose voluntary sacrifice had saved 
three precious lives; but after beating back the 
wolves they found, as they had feared, that he had 
paid the price of his life for his devotion. " Now," 
said the clergyman, pointedly addressing his hear- 
ers, " was that man's devotion equal to the love of 
the Lord Jesus Christ? " A young lady in the audi- 
ence, carried away with rapt interest in the story, 
answered clearly, " No, sir." 

" Why not? " said the preacher. 

" Because," replied the young girl, " that man 
died for his friends, but the Lord Jesus died for his 
enemies." 

So Paul says, " God commendeth his love toward 
us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died 
for us. Much more then, being now justified by his 
blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him." 

Now I have called your attention to this theme 
not only to refresh our gratitude and thanksgiving 
— though I want to do that in my own heart as well 
as in yours — but also to reveal the determination 
and the set purpose which we should have in going 
forth to face the duties of our lives. We ought not 



73 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



to be turned aside by little things. We ought not 
to easily excuse ourselves from doing Christian 
duty. If Christ had been easily turned aside from 
his purpose, we should have been lost without rem- 
edy. As he set his face like a flint toward the cross 
where he was to die for us, so let us set our faces 
like a flint toward our cross, by bearing which, or 
by being crucified upon which, we may bring our 
fellow men to Christ. 

How quick was the ear of Jesus to hear the cry, 
or see the need, of those who were unsaved ! When 
he had steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem, 
knowing that the time had come when he was to 
make his great sacrifice, his ear was still tender and 
sensitive to every cry of need. Poor old blind Bar- 
timseus, only an unknown beggar, heard he was 
going by, and cried out, " Jesus, thou son of David, 
have mercy on me!" and it was enough to stop 
Jesus. He called the man to him and gave him his 
sight, and, more than that, gave him a vision of God 
and a heart full of praise, and started him on a new 
life with songs of thanksgiving in his soul. No 
earthly kingdom could have made Jesus stop or 
turn aside, but the cry of a blind beggar who needed 
his help could do it. Ah, that was in line with the 
very purpose of his mission ! 

A little later on that same journey he is passing 
through Jericho, and little Zacchaeus, the hated tax- 
collector, has climbed up on a limb of a big tree, and 



THE FLINT-FACE OF JESUS. 



79 



sits there watching, with a great loneliness in his 
heart and a great hunger in his soul. Zacchseus has 
lived long enough to find out that money will not 
buy the most important things, and that mean deed 
after it is done is not done with, but has a way of 
coming back through the memory and the conscience 
and lashing the soul into terror. So Zacchseus sits 
there, hated and lonely and bitter-hearted, almost 
hopeless, and Jesus walks under the tree, and, look- 
ing up, sees through the eyes of Zacchseus into his 
very soul. And the Master tells him to come down 
and take him to dinner. And so Zacchseus leads 
the Christ home with him, and Jesus stops on his 
way to the cross to purge the hell out of this man's 
heart and home, and to leave a sun-burst of heaven 
in it. But you will notice that it was in the line of 
Christ's work to do that. There was not a man in 
Palestine rich enough, or great enough, to persuade 
Christ to go to a dinner just for display or show. 
He went home with Zacchseus to save him. 

Oh, my friends, shall we not catch the spirit of 
the Son of God ? Life is passing for us. The time 
is speedily coming when we must give an account of 
our stewardship. The youngest life here will soon 
be like a tale that is told, and some of us are at the 
very gate of eternity. Is it not time for us to set our 
faces like a flint, steadfastly, toward doing our duty, 
toward carrying the Gospel to our neighbors, tow- 
ard reaching out our hands and our hearts to the 



8o 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



weak and the ignorant, the poor and the sinful, 
and seeking in Christ's stead to reconcile them to 
God? Too often we have been turned away from 
our purpose, and have let the great interests of our 
lives suffer that we might make more money, or 
have more frivolity, or greater luxury of the flesh. 
But in God's name let us repent of that, and set our 
faces once and for all toward the great purpose of 
human living. The fields are white for the harvest. 
The need of consecrated, self-denying, devoted men 
and women to help sweeten the sorrows of the 
broken-hearted, to carry the burdens of the weak, 
to bring the hope of heaven to the hopeless, is very 
great. Shall we not now give Christ first ourselves, 
and then whatever of talent, and money, and 
strength he has committed to our hands ? 



VIII. 



Strong Hearts. 

" And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one 
toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward 
you; to the end he may establish your hearts unblamable in 
holiness before God." — i Thessalonians 3: 12, 13. 

Not long ago I was coming up from the South 
with a conductor, who told me of a recent experi- 
ence he had had bringing his train over the same 
route one cold night. He said that the engineer 
began to lose time and kept losing it. He com- 
plained that he could not keep up steam. The fire- 
man worked with all his might, but gradually the 
fire died down on their hands, and finally went out 
entirely, so that there was not steam enough to draw 
the train. There was a long delay, and everybody 
suffered inconvenience and discomfort. 

The human heart is the locomotive of life. So 
long as the heart keeps true and strong, with plenty 
of the steam of courage and hope, no man is really 
defeated, and everything that is good enough to be 
true in a human life may be possible. But when 
the heart faints, and the inner fires of the soul be- 
gin to die down, nothing can really help that does 



82 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



not start a new fire in the soul. A dead engine must 
go to the roundhouse, have all the ashes and clinkers 
taken out, and a new fire built ; then it may start on 
a new journey with better success. The same is 
true of life. A clear head, a strong body, and all 
outward surroundings propitious, are of no avail 
unless there be a strong, brave heart, true and pure 
in its unselfish love for God and man. 

The mightiest men and women the world has 
known for blessing have been those who have been 
mighty in the affections. They have been people 
with large, generous hearts. Among the many 
stories about Queen Victoria that, since her death, 
have filled the papers, nothing has seemed more de- 
lightful to me than the statement that of all the 
praise which has been written about her in the last 
score of years or more, in prose and verse, nothing 
ever gave her so much pleasure as a little poem which 
told the story of a poor old peasant woman who was 
made very happy because the Queen nodded to her 
as she drove by her humble door. The little song 
runs : 

" I'm but an auld body 

Livin' up in Deeside 
In a twa-roomed bit hoosie 

Wi' a toofa' beside; 
Wi' my coo an' my grumphy 

I'm as happy 's a bee, 
But I'm far prooder noo 

Since she noddit to me ! 



STRONG HEARTS. 



83 



" I'm nae sae far past wi't — 

I'm grey trig an' hale, 
Can plant twa-three tawties, 

An' look after my kale ; 
An' when oor Queen passes 

I rin oot to see 
Gin by luck she micht notice 

An' nod oot to me! 

" But I've aye been unlucky, 

An' the blinds were aye doon, 
Till last week the time 

O' her veesit cam' roun'; 
I waved my bit apron 

As brisk 's I could dee, 
An' the Queen laughed fu' kindly, 

An' noddit to me ! 

" My son sleeps in Egypt — 

It's nae ease to freit — 
An' yet when I think o't 

I'm sair like to greet; 
She may feel for my sorrow, 

She's a mither, ye see; 
An' may be she kent o't 

When she noddit to me !" 

These quaint and simple Doric verses appeared 
anonymously in an obscure Scotch paper, and they 
came under the Queen's eye accidentally. The 
homely tribute to her as the mother of her people 
so touched her tender heart that she sought out the 
author, and wrote him a beautiful letter of acknowl- 
edgment. And over and over again during the last 
weary years of her life she asked to have these little 



8 4 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



verses read to her. It was the heart of the Queen 
that gave her her great power over her people. 

No one can make a greater mistake, so far as the 
happiness of life is concerned, than to be careless or 
indifferent about the development of the heart. To 
neglect to feed the heart upon the tender fellowships 
of life is to narrow and embitter the years that come 
after. Will Carleton tells the story of a young man 
who was sitting in the hotel office looking dreamily 
and drearily out of the window. The clerk, who had 
nothing else to do just then, came and sat down by 
him, to "cheer him up" a little; for it is part of 
a good hotel man's business to keep his guests happy 
and contented ; they will stay longer. 

" Thinking up some new scheme to make money, 
I'll be bound, Roberts," he ventured, looking quizzi- 
cally at the youth ;"or about some new ' best girl ; ' 
or—" 

"Or on what a caricature on home even a first- 
class hotel like this one is," interrupted the young 
man. 

The clerk looked thoughtful. He knew by experi- 
ence that the other was right. 

" You see," continued the guest, " I'd give five 
hundred dollars to go home and spend the night. I 
say ' five hundred dollars,' because that's all I'm 
worth as yet. If it was ten thousand, I'd give it, 
all the same. And I'm wondering why it was that I 
didn't stay there more when I could do it for noth- 



STRONG HEARTS. 



85 



ing. Father and mother always used to say, ' You're 
going to stay home to-night, aren't you ? ' and I'd 
answer : ' Oh, no ! I've got to go to ' — this, that or 
the other. And then I'd be out, maybe, till mid- 
night, or later, and act a little cross at breakfast in 
the morning." 

" But of course no one can expect a young fellow 
to be tied at home all through his merriest time of 
life," answered the clerk. 

" That's what father used to say," rejoined the 
guest. " When mother's eyes would moisten a little 
because I was going out, he would say, laughingly, 
but I thought a little regretfully, ' We can't put old 
heads on young shoulders, wife.' And that was true. 
But the trouble is, I did not realize that my head 
was going to get older so soon." 

"Well, you say you'd give five hundred dollars 
to drop in there again," ventured the hotel clerk, 
who began to pity the young man to a degree en- 
tirely inconsistent with the hotel's interests. " It 
won't cost you anywhere near that sum to go there. 
Why not pay ' the old folks ' a visit? " 

" Alas," replied the young man, " there are now 
no ' old folks/ and no home to visit. All are gone. 
And hundreds of times I could have done so easily 
what I would now give half of my life to do just 
once." 

Do not, I beseech you, be fitting your own heart 
for such sorrow in the years to come. 



86 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



Christ's appeal is to our hearts. It is at the door 
of the heart that he knocks for admittance. Paul 
declares in his letter to the Ephesians that the great 
purpose of all religious teaching and influence is, 
" That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith ; 
that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be 
able to comprehend with all saints what is the 
breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to 
know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, 
that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God." 
The peace and joy of the Christian religion has its 
fountain in the heart. In his letter to the Colossians 
Paul says, " Let the peace of God rule in your hearts, 
to the which also ye are called in one body ; and be 
ye thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you 
richly in all wisdom ; teaching and admonishing one 
another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, 
singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord." 
Paul always understood that the centre of religion 
was in the heart, and that in the heart was the great 
need for Christian comfort. In his second letter to 
the Thessalonians he utters this sweet prayer for 
his friends : " Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, 
and God, even our Father, which hath loved us, and 
hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope 
through grace, comfort your hearts, and stablish 
you in every good word and work." 

Christians grow in grace and Christian strength 
as they open their hearts to the coming of Christ, 



STRONG HEARTS. 



87 



and as they give themselves in heart fellowship to 
loving service for him. These are always important 
and interesting questions to put to ourselves : Am 
I growing in the divine grace? Am I growing in 
the knowledge of Christ? Is my heart becoming 
stronger in righteousness and true holiness? You 
remember the stream which Ezekiel saw, which was 
at first but a small stream; but, a quarter of a mile 
away, it had grown until its waters were ankle-deep, 
and half a mile away the water was knee-deep. 
Another thousand cubits, or three-quarters of a mile 
from the fountain, the water was waist-deep; after 
going another thousand cubits, or a mile in all, the 
stream could no longer be forded, and there were 
waters to swim in. There were no tributaries com- 
ing in; it was simply the swelling from the main 
fountain. The fountain was the sanctuary of God. 
Suppose you apply this picture of the prophet to 
your own Christian experience. How many miles 
are you from the fountain where you first drank of 
the River of the Water of Life ? Are there waters to 
swim in, in the blessed fullness of experience which 
you realize, or is your Christian life more shallow 
now than it was half a mile from where you started ? 
Dr. Maclaren says that Australian rivers are like 
some men's lives — a chain of ponds in the dry sea- 
son; nay, not even a chain, but a series, with no 
connecting channel of water between them. That 
is like a great many Christian people. They have 



88 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



isolated times when they feel the voice of Christ's 
love and yield themselves to the power of the world 
to come, and then there are long intervals when they 
feel neither the one nor the other. But the prophet's 
vision ought to be realized by each of us. It is God's 
ideal, which there is power in the Gospel to> make 
real in the case of every one of us — the rapid and 
continuous increase in the depth and in the scour 
of " the River of the Water of Life " that flows 
through our lives. Luther used to say, " If you 
want to clean out a dunghill, turn the Elbe into it." 
If you desire to have your hearts cleansed of all the 
foulness of sin, turn the River of Life into it ; but it 
must be always a deepening river that is growing 
stronger in its tide. 

A purely intellectual Christianity, to which the 
mind accedes, but which does not enlist the heart's 
affections and control the motive and spirit of a 
man so that his temper and conversation are 
mastered by it, has no influence or power for Christ 
before the world. It is only a heart religion that 
rings true in the market-places of social fellowship. 

Rev. James Robertson tells the story of a little 
girl who once received a sovereign from her mother, 
and with it was sent to the shop to make purchases. 
When she offered the sovereign to the shopkeeper, 
he rang it upon the counter, and thought there was 
something suspicious about it. He said to her, 
" This is not genuine." 



STRONG HEARTS. 89 

" Oh, it must be; my mother has just been to the 
bank, where she received it from the teller, and only 
a few minutes ago she handed it to me." 

" Well, look here." He took a good sovereign 
from the till and rang the two together, and proved 
to her that there was something wrong about it. 

She went back to the bank and asked the cashier 
to give her another one. She said, " My mother 
gave me this." 

" Yes," he said, " I gave her that sovereign." 

" Well, the man at the shop refuses to take the 
sovereign, and says that there is not the right ring 
about it." 

" Oh, he must be mistaken." And then he got 
another and rang it beside the first coin, and dis- 
covered the same thing. Then with a glass he ex- 
amined it narrowly, and said : " The gold is per- 
fectly good, but there is really a flaw in the coin, and 
it will have to go back to the mint again." 

I think that there are a good many people who are 
like that coin. They mean to be good, and in the 
main their lives are moral and upright ; but the ring 
of love, the true ring of sympathy that springs from 
a warm, loving heart, is not there. They need 
to go back to the mint again. Oh, I beg you, do not 
hide your condition from yourself. Let us be hon- 
est before God. Have we the right ring ? It is not, 
" Do I mean well ? Am I as good as my neighbors ? 
Do I average up pretty well with other professed 



go 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



Christians?" Oh, no, let us put all such folly away 
from us. " Is my heart so overflowing with love to 
God and with gratitude to the Lord Jesus Christ 
that songs of praise constantly make melody in my 
heart ? Am I all aglow with desire to so live before 
the men and women about me that I shall make 
them know and feel that Jesus Christ is a Divine 
Lord and Saviour?" If this is not true, then let me 
go back to the Mint ! You will find it at the mercy- 
seat. Yield your heart anew to God, and let him 
stamp it all his own. 

Let me call your attention to another thought, 
that is, the relation between our hearts' love and 
sympathy for others and the building up of holiness 
in our own hearts. Take the whole paragraph into 
your thought : " Now God himself and our Father, 
and our Lord Jesus Christ, direct our way unto you. 
And the Lord make you to increase and abound in 
love one toward another, and toward all men, even 
as we do toward you." And now look for the rea- 
son for all this : " To the end he may stablish your 
hearts unblamable in holiness before God." How 
could Paul say more strongly that a man can never 
have a strong heart in holiness before God so long 
as he is selfish? The unselfish soul opens the door 
to the pure strong heart. The first word Zacchaeus 
said when he stood before Christ in repentance for 
his sin was, " The half of my goods I give to the 
poor." 



STRONG HEARTS. 



91 



Dr. Webb-Peploe, the English preacher, tells of 
a very rich man in his parish who had been very 
close and niggardly with his money, and had never 
given much for benevolence. He had a paralytic 
stroke, and when Dr. Peploe went to see him, he 
said : " The Lord has stricken me; and I am afraid I 
may die. I have sent for you at once that I may do 
what I suppose is right before God ; I want to go to 
heaven, and I want you to take a hundred pounds 
for the poor." Dr. Peploe looked him straight in 
the face and said : "Do you think you are going to 
buy your soul's way to glory by a dirty hundred 
pounds? Give your money where you like; I will 
not touch it ! " That was pretty strong, but it was 
the man's salvation. Pie lingered seven years, a 
poor, helpless invalid, but that sick-bed was God's 
flower-bed. His life became generous and loving, 
the heart within him was broken up and became a 
heart of flesh, and while he poured forth streams of 
benevolence, his spiritual life became strong and 
beautiful. 

There is no sweeter fragrance in the world than 
that which goes forth from a generous heart. At 
one of the meetings of the Presbyterian General As- 
sembly an effort was made to raise funds sufficient 
to send a young Princeton graduate to India as a 
missionary. A lady present noticed a teacher of a 
home mission school, who was her guest, slip a gold 
ring from her finger and put it on the plate. She 



9 2 



THE KING'S STEIVARDS. 



asked the giver why she did it. The teacher replied 
that she had no money, but that she knew what it 
would mean to have the effort to send the missionary 
fail. She had been told that she must close her own 
school because no funds were given to support it. 
But she had refused to give up her work, and had 
secured through friends enough to continue for a 
while, because she could not bear to take away from 
her pupils what they so much needed. And for the 
same reason she had given her ring, with its valued 
associations, to help another to do what was so dear 
to her. 

The next morning a delegate brought the ring to 
the Assembly and told its story. The ring was worth 
about five dollars. " I will give five dollars to send 
that ring back to that young woman," said a minis- 
ter. " I will give five dollars," said the stated clerk. 
A newspaper reporter handed up five dollars to the 
platform. Pastors, missionaries, visitors, came for- 
ward eagerly with their cash, each one determined 
to have a share in restoring the ring. In ten minutes 
over three hundred dollars had been passed to the 
desk. The heart in the little woman who gave the 
ring was what did it all. They caught sight of the 
flame of love and self-sacrifice which made her so 
glad to do something for Christ's sake, and it 
touched all their hearts. Let us so open the doors 
of our hearts, and pour forth our gifts of love to 
God and to his people, that he shall be able to make 
our hearts unblamable in holiness before him. 



IX. 



An Old Portrait of a Christian. 

" Create in me a clean heart, 0 God ; and renew a right spirit 
within me. Cast me not away from thy presence ; and take not 
thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy sal- 
vation ; and uphold me with thy free Spirit. Then will I teach 
transgressors thy ways, and sinners shall be converted unto 
thee." — Psalm 51 : 10-13. 

When we read a paragraph like this, written 
thousands of years ago, we are impressed with the 
fact that human nature is the same in every age, 
and that the great necessities of the soul are just 
the same now as in the days of David. David has 
painted here, many centuries before the coming of 
Jesus Christ, a portrait of the kind of transforma- 
tion which must come to a sinful man before he can 
be useful in winning men to God. And yet if the 
words were put on the lips of some man in the New 
Testament, or if we were to hear them fresh and 
new as the coinage of a heart hot with its own deep 
experience to-day in our own country and among 
our own people, we would feel that no better de- 
scription could be given of that deep and genuine 



94 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



heart revolution in motive and purpose and life 
which must transpire before a sinning man may go 
forth with influence and power to win men from 
their transgressions and convert them to the love 
of God in Christ Jesus. Thus we find in David's 
portrait of a man of God in his day one that serves 
perfectly as the portrait of a true Christian in our 
own day. Let us study some of the features of this 
portrait. 

First, a clean heart is fundamental in the Chris- 
tian life. " Keep thy heart with all diligence/' said 
a wise man of old, " for out of it are the issues of 
life." Christ declares that a bad life must come 
from a bad heart, and that it is only from a good 
heart that a flowing stream of good conduct can 
come. A wholesome character and a pure life can 
only be maintained by having a clean heart behind 
them. 

David speaks as though the making of a clean 
heart was the work of God. His cry is, " Create 
in me a clean heart, O God." That is true, and yet 
it is not all the truth, for God cannot create a clean 
heart in us unless it be also our own choice. God 
will not break down our will in the matter. From 
our inmost souls we must choose to have a clean 
heart. I think there are people who deceive them- 
selves at this point. They pray to God and ask him 
for a clean heart, but down at the bottom of their 
will-force they do not wish it, and they do not will 



AN OLD PORTRAIT OF A CHRISTIAN. 9 5 

it. They keep right on thinking and doing things 
which are unclean, the while they are praying God 
to make them clean. There is a word in the first 
Epistle of John which makes clear the working to- 
gether of man's will with God's will in the creation 
of a clean heart in a man who has been sinful. John 
says, " This, then, is the message which we have 
heard of him, and declare unto you : that God is 
light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that 
we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, 
we lie, and do not the truth; but if we walk in the 
light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one 
with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son 
cleanseth us from all sin. If we say that we have 
no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in 
us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just 
to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all un- 
righteousness." That surely makes it clear. Our 
walk and our prayers must match. They must run 
in parallel lines. If a man prays God to give him 
a clean heart, while he continues to do dark and 
shady things, his prayers will be of no avail. If we 
confess our sins and walk in the light — that is, to the 
very best of our knowledge do right — we can de- 
pend up on it that Christ will keep his word and will 
create in us clean hearts. 

The second suggestion, is " a right spirit." The 
spirit is all-important in a human life. Form and 
ceremony amount to little; the spirit is everything. 



9 6 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



You know how true that is in regard to your neigh- 
bors and business associates. No amount of polite- 
ness or social polish can take the place of a right 
and genuine spirit of sympathy or of genuine man- 
liness or womanliness. So in religion; if a man is 
to be valuable to God and his fellows, the real spirit 
of reverence and worship must be in him. Some 
English preacher says that it is the spiritual in our 
religion which never changes and never grows old. 
John Wesley in his day speaks of being wearied 
with the wordy strife, and cries out, " To thee, the 
Way, the Truth, the Life, at last I turn." And it 
is interesting to note that while the great theological 
discussions of that time have been fought out, and 
have now no interest whatever to the great multi- 
tudes of the world, the spiritual hymns that were 
brought forth in that period live on, because they 
breathe the living spirit of the Christian faith. Top- 
lady was a great theological debater. Nobody knows 
or cares anything about that to-day; but the whole 
world sings his great hymn, " Rock of Ages, cleft for 
me," with reverent heart and dewy eye. Who cares 
about the old bitter theological discussion connected 
with the Oxford movement? But men of every 
shade of denominational life join with tender heart 
and sympathetic voice in singing Keble's hymn, 
" Sun of my soul, thou Saviour dear," and Car- 
dinal Newman's inspired song, " Lead, kindly Light, 
amid the encircling gloom." As the years have gone 



AN OLD PORTRAIT OF A CHRISTIAN. 97 

on change and decay have fallen on most of the 
things of that time, but still we sing, and pray as 
we sing, " O thou who changes t not, abide with me." 

I do not wish to disparage beautiful churches or 
beautiful religious forms, but the tendency of hu- 
manity to yield to worldliness and let the vital life 
be displaced by form and ceremony, makes it very 
important that we should constantly lay the em- 
phasis in our own feeling upon the supreme impor- 
tance of a right spirit in all our work. I very much 
prefer a beautiful church, with all its modern ac- 
cessories, to the old log cabin in which I began my 
ministry; and all other things being equal, I would 
rather worship God in a beautiful church than in one 
of those rude log huts. But if the service in the 
church is cold and formal, and without the spirit of 
loving consecration and self-sacrifice, I would a 
thousand times rather worship in the log cabin with 
men and women whose hearts breathe the spirit of 
supreme devotion to the Heavenly Father. As one 
has said, a marble cistern, exquisitely carved, may be 
very pleasing to the eye, but if it contains only stag- 
nant, dirty water, I would rather go down on my 
knees and drink of the brook that gushes from the 
mountain side. It is the spirit that gives the meas- 
ure of life. 

A consciousness of God's presence is another im- 
portant feature of a true life. David says, " Cast 
me not away from thy presence." He knew that 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



he would have no power if he felt the loneliness of 
an exile. Only as he walked in the presence of God, 
and felt that God was with him, would he be power- 
ful for service. I wonder if there are any of us try- 
ing to serve God and influence others for righteous- 
ness, who yet are without God and with no sense of 
God's nearness to and presence in our own hearts. 
If so, let there be a mighty turning unto God this 
hour. We can do nothing alone. We must have the 
inspiration and uplift of feeling that come from the 
assurance that God is with us, and that we are work- 
ing together with him. 

Another phase of this same feature of the portrait 
is the necessity of the Holy Spirit. " Take not thy 
Holy Spirit from me." It is the Spirit of the living 
God that can make powerful what would otherwise 
be only weak and useless talent in our hands. Dr. 
Meyer says that one day while out walking he came 
on a saw-pit, where a man was hard at work with 
the upper handle of a long saw which he was rais- 
ing and lowering. Meyer knew that, though he 
could not see him, there was another man in the 
bottom of the pit, the motions of whose body cor- 
responded exactly with those of the man on the sur- 
face. The two were co-operating to the same end, 
and that saw was moving slowly through the heavy 
beam of timber by the united energy of the man he 
could see and the one he could not see. The co- 
operation between these two men is like the co-opera- 



AN OLD PORTRAIT OF A CHRISTIAN. 



tion between the sincere Christian, seeking to win 
men to God, and the Holy Spirit ; and it is the heart 
and soul of all successful service to God and man. 
The sawyer at the top of the pit is an emblem of the 
Christian minister whose heart is given up to his 
purpose; or of the earnest Sunday-school teacher 
who takes seriously the divine privilege which is his ; 
it is an emblem of the Christian mother who holds 
herself as God's steward over her children, or of the 
Christian business man who feels that the men in 
his employ are immortal souls for whom he must 
give an account. But at the other end of this en- 
ginery of influence and power, hidden out of sight 
but always there, is the Holy Spirit, working with 
every man or woman who with devout purpose is 
seeking to bring men to God. 

There is another interesting characteristic in this 
portrait, that is, the joy which lights it up. " Re- 
store unto me the joy of thy salvation." What is 
the chief characteristic of the joy of salvation? 
There is no joy so deep and so precious, and yet it 
is a joy with an element of earnest responsibility 
in it. Paul suggests its character in that sentence 
in the second letter to the Corinthians, when he is 
speaking about the light afflictions that are only tem- 
porary but shall result in " an eternal weight of 
glory." Dr. Matheson, the blind preacher of Edin- 
borough, has a very beautiful thought, and one full 
of teaching, on this point. He says that the transit 

LorC* 



IOO 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



from earth to heaven is not an emancipation from 
care; it is an emancipation from care about our- 
selves. A man loses all his remorse, all his weight 
of guilt, all his burden of fear of punishment; the 
Lord takes all that away when he forgives us. He 
sets us free from it all. But he gives us in its place 
a " weight of glory." He empties us that we may be 
filled again with a higher care, love's care. There 
is a weight which is most felt in heaven, and which 
is heaven's glory; it is the labor of love. And so 
the Lord, when he forgives our sin, restores unto 
us the joy of salvation. He gives us the joy of 
realizing that it is our privilege to have fellowship 
with Jesus Christ in saving others. The joy of sal- 
vation is never the joy of ease or self-indulgence. 
It is the joy of self-sacrifice; it is the joy of exertion; 
it is the joy of taking upon your shoulder another's 
burden; it is the joy of throwing the life-line to a 
man who is drowning; it is the joy that thrills 
through a man's soul when he feels that but for him 
some one would perish, but that through his help 
a man or a woman or a child has been redeemed. 
Oh, it is a glorious joy, but a joy that the self-in- 
dulgent, the worldly, the shirk, never can know. 
Nothing will ever come within the reach of these to 
compare with the deep and blessed joy known to 
those who experience " the joy of salvation." 

O brothers and sisters, I covet for each one of us 
that joy. As Matheson says, " The joy of thy Lord 



AN OLD PORTRAIT OF A CHRISTIAN. 101 



is not a bird song ; it is a heart's enlargement. The 
risen Christ remains not in the garden; he must 
ascend to the cares of his Father. The place pre- 
pared for thee is no scene of luxurious ease, no plot 
of ground shut off from mortal pain. There is a 
gate leading into the highways and the hedges, open- 
ing out into the far country of the prodigal son. 
And through this gate thy Father would have thee 
go, to minister, to succor, to save. This is the place 
prepared for thee in the mansions of thy Father. 
This is the ivory gate and golden, where the angels 
go out and in. This is the narrow way which 
leadeth unto light; and they who have found that 
life, retrace the road to bring their brother in. Thy 
weight of responsibility will be thy weight of glory." 

If we have all these characteristics, we shall know 
what David meant when he said, " Uphold me with 
thy free Spirit," or as the New Version puts it, " Up- 
hold me with a free spirit." The consciousness of 
being right in God's sight, a keen sense of the pres- 
ence of God, an assurance that we are working to- 
gether with the Holy Spirit, and the glow of service 
inspired and cheered by the joy of salvation will 
help us to go forth in a free spirit. We shall have 
the freedom of the saints. All the handicaps will be 
taken away ; every weight and sin that besets a man 
is thrown aside, and he runs steadfastly in the race 
that is set before him. Many Christians lack free- 
dom because they are going clogged and yoked and 



102 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



Aveighted down with a hundred burdens that ought 
to be thrown away. " Let us lay aside every weight, 
and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us 
run with patience the race that is set before us, look- 
ing unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith." 

What is the result of such a life? Two results 
are suggested. First, transgressors shall see God in 
us : " Then will I teach transgressors thy ways." 
We shall not have to invite them to a formal school 
in order to do it, either. They will feel the presence 
of God in our conversation, in our treatment of 
others, and in all the spirit of our daily life. When 
I was a boy at home, if I fell into any sin, nothing 
convicted me so much as the pure, sincere Christian 
life of my father and mother. It was their lives 
more than anything else that taught the boyish trans- 
gressor the ways of God. A man said to me not a 
great while ago, " The thing that brought me to 
Christ was the Christian conduct of my employer. 
I watched him narrowly, and he never swerved from 
the right. I saw opportunities where by swerving 
from strict righteousness he might greatly increase 
his profits, but he never faltered for a moment. 
After a while it came to have a great fascination for 
me; there was something so powerful in it that it 
constantly convicted me of sin. I saw God's way in 
him." 

And, finally, sinners shall be converted unto God. 
The religion that does not make converts is of no 



AN OLD PORTRAIT OF A CHRISTIAN. 103 

avail. A selfish Christianity is a misnomer. Christ 
does not tell us to shine our light, but we are to have 
so much of the light in us that when we go forth 
among men the light will pour out upon the darkness 
and dispel it. I feel very profoundly that something 
is wrong with us as Christians, or there would be 
more people converted to Christ. Too many persons 
are coming into our Sunday-school classes, remain- 
ing Sabbath after Sabbath, for months, and going 
away without having seen the Lord. Too many peo- 
ple come into our churches Sunday after Sunday, 
and though hearing the message from the pulpit, go 
away without being saved. Too many people live in 
our homes with us, work with us in the office and 
the store, without being convicted of sin by the purity 
and the singleness of devotion to God expressed in 
our characters and in our conduct. May God save us 
from being stumbling-blocks and barriers that shall 
keep men from the kingdom rather than lead them 
into it ! May God help us to search our hearts ! Is 
there uncleanness there? Have impure thoughts 
and imaginations nestled and brought forth their 
young there? If so, may God help us this day, at 
the mercy-seat and in the secret closet, to open our 
hearts to the cleansing power of Jesus' blood. Are 
we working alone? Have we received the Holy 
Ghost since we believed? or is the whole thought 
of the Holy Spirit vague and unreal to us ? If this 
be true, I pray you go no longer exiled and alone 



104 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



to try to do a work too great for you unaided, but 
repent of your sins and open your hearts as Cor- 
nelius and his household did under the sermon of 
Peter, and receive the Holy Ghost. May Charles 
Wesley's soul-inspiring hymn be the prayer of every 
heart : 

" Jesus, thine all-victorious love 
Shed in my heart abroad : 
Then shall my feet no longer rove, 
Rooted and fixed in God. 

" O that in me the sacred fire 
Might now begin to glow, 
Burn up the dross of base desire 
And make the mountains flow ! 

" O that it now from heaven might fall, 
And all my sins consume ! 
Come, Holy Ghost, for thee I call ; 
Spirit of burning, come ! 

" Refining fire, go through my heart ; 
Illuminate my soul ; 
Scatter thy life through every part, 
And sanctify the whole. 

" My steadfast soul, from falling free, 
Shall then no longer move, 
While Christ is all the world to me, 
And all my heart is love." 



X. 

Three Men whom Jesus Called. 

" And it came to pass that, as they went in the way, a certain 
man said unto him : Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou 
goest. And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds 
of the air have nests ; but the Son of Man hath not where to 
lay his head. And he said unto another, Follow me. But he 
said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. Jesus 
said unto him, Let the dead bury their dead ; but go thou and 
preach the kingdom of God. And another also said, Lord, I 
will follow thee ; but let me first go bid them farewell which 
are at home at my house. And Jesus said unto him, No man, 
having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for 
the kingdom of God." — Luke 9: 57-62. 

Here are three men whom Jesus called to be his 
disciples, whose conversation with the Saviour at 
that interesting time ought to have a great message 
for us. The first man responds with a quick out- 
burst of enthusiasm. At once, without any parley- 
ing, he says, " I will follow thee whithersoever thou 
goest." Christ evidently saw that though the man's 
answer did him honor, and that he was entirely sin- 
cere, he did not fully appreciate the earnestness and 
seriousness of the undertaking to which he con- 
sented. To follow Jesus then was not — nor is it 



io6 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



now — a holiday excursion. Christ wished this man 
to understand very clearly at the start the full mean- 
ing of the declaration that he would share his fate 
with Jesus. He at once points out to him that to do 
this will no doubt mean the loss of a great many 
things to which he has been accustomed, and will ne- 
cessitate much self-denial. Jesus calls attention to 
the fact that he is the most homeless of men on the 
earth; he points upward to a little branch where a 
bird has built her nest, and he says, " Even the birds 
of the air have nests;" he stretches his hand toward 
a fox that is running for his hole on the side of the 
hill, and says, " Even the foxes have holes where 
they may hide when pursued by the hunter, but the 
Son of Man hath not where to lay his head." We 
are sure that Jesus did not mean to drive this man 
away from his desire to become his disciple. But he 
did not want him to start out with a wrong idea, 
or from wrong motives. If he became his disciple, 
then he must share the sorrows as well as the joys, 
the persecution as well as the praise, of his Master 
and Lord. 

I think we need this message. I am sure that 
modern Christianity needs to hear it with increased 
emphasis. Are there not many who are glad to 
shelter themselves under the name of Jesus for the 
sake of the respectability, the social and moral stand- 
ing it implies, yet who are unwilling to share with 
Christ when to do so means to bear the brunt of a 



THREE MEN WHOM JESUS CALLED. 107 

popular opinion in the town or country which is 
wrong and wicked ? Remember that Christ ' never 
calls right wrong, or wrong right, because the wrong 
happens to be in the majority and the right is 
crushed to the wall. Show me anywhere in the 
world a cause which stands for goodness and right- 
eousness against a majority however great, where 
to defend the right means to be abused and slan- 
dered and cast down, and I will show you there the 
Man of Nazareth, with the thorn-pierced brow and 
the nail-wounded palm. Your compromising, self- 
careful men and women, who wear the name of 
Jesus as a badge of honor when it is popular, and 
pull on an overcoat of compromise and cowardice 
to hide the badge when to show it means loss of 
votes or of business or of praise, need to hear the 
heart-searching words of Jesus, " Foxes have holes, 
and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man 
hath not where to lay his head." You say at the 
communion altar, " Lord, I will follow thee whither- 
soever thou goest." Do you mean by that that 
you will follow Jesus and his standards of righteous- 
ness when to do so means to run straight against 
the high priests in business and politics and society 
in your circle? If you do not, then what folly is 
your declaration to your Lord ! Oh, may God make 
us true ! Give us three hundred men and women in 
any church who are like Gideon's band of three 
hundred, utterly unselfish, ready to go thirsty them- 



io8 THE KING'S STEWARDS. 

selves that the cause of God and righteousness may 
triumph, and there will be such an upheaval for 
righteousness, such a spreading abroad of Christian 
influence and power, that the whole world shall take 
note of it. It is not only more Christians that we 
need, but a better quality of Christians. We need 
more loyalty to Jesus Christ. We need a readier 
spirit of self-sacrifice, a more abounding emotion of 
love to the Saviour, a fidelity that will not waver. 
We need men and women who love the church of 
Jesus Christ with such intensity that it is the first 
and foremost thing in their lives, and everything 
else takes a second place; to whom Christ is more 
than business or politics or society. It is to be that 
kind of Christians that we are called, and God help 
us if we are failing to meet the demand ! 

The second man presents to us another phase of 
the same message. When Christ appealed to him to 
follow him as his disciple, he expressed his willing- 
ness to do so, but said, " Suffer me first to go and 
bury my father." Jesus said unto him, " Let the 
dead bury their dead; but go thou and preach the 
kingdom of God." At first glance, probably, we 
are shocked at this answer of Christ, and are ready 
to say, " This is harsh and unfeeling and un- 
natural." But we must take into consideration that 
Jesus knew what was in man; and he knew that if 
this man went back to his father's house, and to the 
long mourning ceremonies which were to follow, 



THREE MEN WHOM JESUS CALLED. 109 



he would be again entangled with worldly things. 
A man who might be very valuable in the further- 
ance of the Gospel would thus be altogether lost. 
Christ saw that the man, while expressing his will- 
ingness to follow him, did not really surrender his 
will to him, and did not look upon following Christ 
as the first and supreme thing in his life. That 
" suffer me first " suggests the self-will which was 
behind the request. Christ will be first or nothing 
in your life and mine. Religion is a place where a 
man cannot carry water on both shoulders; all life's 
blessings will be spilled in the attempt. It was as if 
Christ was saying to this man, " Your father is 
dead; your going back can be of no value to him 
now ; but multitudes of other men are dying in their 
sins, and others are undergoing a living death be- 
cause of the darkness and iniquity in which they ex- 
ist. Let the dead bury their dead, and you come and 
follow me, and get your heart on fire with the mes- 
sage of eternal life, that you may carry hope and 
mercy to the living." 

Then here is this third man : " And another also 
said, Lord, I will follow thee ; but let me first go bid 
them farewell which are at home at my house." 
And Jesus said unto him, " No man, having put his 
hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the 
kingdom of God." Again that thought of harshness 
comes back at these words, and we are ready to say, 
" Surely there could be no harm in the man's going 



no 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



to bid his father and mother farewell ; and not only 
would there be no harm, but it would be right and 
proper." Perhaps you recall the story of how Elijah 
called Elisha to fit himself to be a man of God. 
You remember that when Elijah came striding across 
the field where the young Elisha was ploughing with 
his oxen, he threw his prophet's mantle over the 
young man's shoulders and walked away as if to 
leave him. The young man knew at once that that 
was God's call, and he ran after Elijah and said, 
" Let me, I pray thee, kiss my father and my mother, 
and then I will follow thee." And Elijah, stern man 
though he was, gave his consent. Why should 
Christ, whose whole character was dominated by 
tenderness and sympathy, have acted in so different 
a manner? I think we may find the explanation in 
the fact that the father and mother of Elisha were 
evidently godly people, who would feel that their 
son could not be honored in any other way so much 
as to be a prophet of the Most High God. Elisha 
would only get encouragement and blessing from his 
parents; for him to go back home under those cir- 
cumstances would be only to strengthen him in his 
great purpose. But Jesus is talking to a man, no 
doubt, whose home friends would be bitterly opposed 
to his going away on what they would call " a fool's 
chase." And Christ saw that deep down in this 
man's heart there was a lack of decision ; he wanted 
to take one backward look before he leaped into a 



THREE MEN WHOM JESUS CALLED. in 



thorough espousal of the Christian life. It was as if 
he said, " Yes, Lord, I am much taken with you, and 
I intend to follow you, but let me go home and think 
it over ; let me talk with my old friends about it, and 
see what they say." Christ saw it was now or never 
with this man. If he went back among his old asso- 
ciates and talked it over with them, they would all 
be opposed to his following Christ, and he would 
have odds of ten to one against him. And so Jesus 
said, in effect, " If you go back, you are lost; choose 
now what you are going to do. You must decide 
it for ever. You have been listening to my words, 
and have been interested in my message ; you have 
put your hand to the plough, and if you go back 
now, undecided, you will prove yourself to be un- 
worthy of the kingdom." 

I am sure that there are many who need this great 
message just as certainly as did this man to whom 
Jesus was speaking. It is religious indecision that 
threatens to be your ruin. You know enough of 
righteousness to be saved, and you have many good 
impulses about it, and many earnest longings for 
the Christian life ; yet there is great danger that you 
will be eternally lost through the lack of earnest, 
resolute decision of character. You need the sup- 
port which would come from a complete committal 
of yourself to Christ. When Garibaldi sailed from 
Genoa, in i860, to deliver Sicily from its oppressors, 
he took with him only a thousand volunteers. They 



112 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



landed at Marsala, almost in the face of the Nea- 
politan fleet. When the commander of Marsala, re- 
turning to the port, saw the steamers on which Gari- 
baldi and his soldiers had come, he gave immediate 
orders to destroy them. Garibaldi, having landed 
his men, looked with indifference, almost with pleas- 
ure, upon their destruction. " Our retreat is cut 
off," he said, exultingly, to his soldiers. " We have 
no hope but in going forward; it is death or victory." 
They went forward to great and glorious victory 
because every man had to be a hero : every man was 
like ten men, because there was no chance to go 
back ; they could only go on. O man, wavering and 
undecided, convicted of sin, and yet half hugging 
your chains, turn your face to the front and march 
openly into the ranks of the soldiers of the Lord 
Jesus Christ. So long as a man dallies with a de- 
cision, retreat and failure are ever possible to him. 

Among the prisoners taken captive early in the 
battle at Waterloo, there was a Highland piper. 
Napoleon, struck with his mountain dress and 
sinewy limbs, asked him to play on his instrument, 
which seems a part of nature itself in the moun- 
tains and glens of Scotland. " Play a pibroch," said 
Napoleon ; and the Highlander played. " Play a 
march." It was done. "Play a retreat." " Na, 
na," said the Highlander, proudly ; " I never learned 
to play a retreat." So Christ is calling for soldiers 
who do not know how to play a retreat, but who have 



THREE MEN WHOM JESUS CALLED. 113 

given their whole hearts and souls up to him and to 
his service. 

I call you to this noble discipleship. Be no longer 
wavering like a wave of the sea. " Choose ye this 
day whom ye will serve." Arouse all that is noble and 
brave and courageous in you to choose that which 
is noblest and best in human life. You have been 
taking backward looks too long. Look forward, 
look upward. Only Christ can save you. Only the 
Christian life is worth living. Let your life pass 
without Christ, without the noble ambitions and 
the lofty fellowships and the glorious hopes that 
come with him, and whatever else you may do, your 
life will be an empty and miserable failure. " Seek 
ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness," 
and all other things that are worth having will be 
added unto you. Honor Christ your Saviour, and 
honor yourself, by making Christ the first Lord of 
your life. 



XI. 



Children's Rights. 

" Do not sin against the child." — Genesis 42 : 22. 

Kate Douglas Wiggin, whose book has sug- 
gested to me this discourse, says that when she 
began to talk and write about this subject, she con- 
cluded to try it on certain types of people, and see 
how they took it. She first interviewed the man 
who washed her windows. 

" Dennis/' she said, " I am writing an article on 
the * Rights of Children.' What do you think about 
it?'' Dennis scratched his head a moment, as 
if badly put to it for an answer, but finally replied, 
"What do I think about it, mum? Why, I think 
we'd ought to giv'm to'm. But Lor', mum, if we 
don't, they take 'em, so what's the odds ?" 

She next approached her French dressmaker, and 
propounded the same question to her, while that in- 
dustrious woman was fitting a collar on her neck. 

"The rights of the child, madam?" she asked, 
her scissors poised in the air. 

" Yes, the rights of the child." 

" Is it of the American child, madam? " 



CHILDREN'S RIGHTS. 



115 



" Yes, of the American child." 
" Oh! he has them! " 

Now both of these incidents suggest the fact that 
there are a large number of people who mistake in- 
dulgences for rights. It is one thing to receive 
great grants of self-indulgence by fits and starts, and 
quite another thing to receive intelligent justice all 
the time. Multitudes of people who are bringing up 
children, fairly wallow, every once in a while, in 
puddles of parental affection, but never recognize 
intelligently the rights of their children. 

Very briefly, let us study a few of these rights. 
First, then, a child has the right to grow — to grow 
naturally and genuinely, as a plant or a tree grows. 
No child can have a really happy childhood without 
this natural and simple growth, and to give a child 
happiness of the true sort is a great thing. The 
brilliant and witty Sidney Smith once said, " If you 
make children happy now, you will make them happy 
twenty years hence by the memory of it ; " and many 
of us are grateful examples of the truth of that 
statement. A child, to grow naturally, must not be 
hurried out of its childhood. Some people do not 
seem to know what growth means. There is a dif- 
ference between growing and swelling. Little Mary 
came down one morning, and said, " Oh, mother, 
I've grown so big in the night! Just look at my 
face and neck." But that was not growing. Her 
face was swollen with the mumps. After a while 



n6 THE KING'S STEWARDS. 

the swelling went down, and Mary was thinner and 
more peaked than before. We must all beware, in 
dealing with children, lest they swell instead of 
grow. Pride and self-will, and many precocious, 
affected ways, are exhibitions of swelling, not grow- 
ing. Children are often pushed along in a hot-house 
way, in the matter of their clothing, so as to take 
all simplicity and happiness out of their lives. 

A lady was visiting in a certain home where a 
little girl was daily tortured by her ambitious 
mother, who was trying to make a " woman " out 
of her. She was compelled to wear clothing that it 
was an anguish to get on and off. One evening the 
visitor heard the little victim groan to her nurse, as 
she wriggled her little curly head out of her gown, 
" Oh ! only God knows how I hate gettin' peeled out 
o' this dress ! " A child so treated is often only a 
little pet, very much like the pet dog that is trained 
to jump through the hoop, or roll over, or go to 
sleep, or say its prayers for a lump of sugar. It is 
a show creature, and the people who bring up such 
children are sinning against immortal beings in a 
way that ought to make the world weep. 

Children have a right to originality. They ought 
to be encouraged to ask questions and pursue in- 
vestigation into the facts of the world about them. 
It is a shame to rub out a child's interrogation points 
until he gets to be such a little mummy that he quits 
asking questions. There are multitudes of grown- 



CHILDREN'S RIGHTS. 



117 



up people about us who find it utterly impossible to 
talk about anything in society except the weather 
or the personal gossip of their set, who were made 
so by their parents through suppression of the 
early and original questioning of their fresh young 
minds. The dull and monotonous bores of social 
life are the penalty for sins against the child. If you 
want a brilliant, original, imaginative, sparkling 
man or woman, whose conversation shall be charm- 
ing, elevating, and delightful, you must begin to 
create such a personality in childhood by encourag- 
ing the romantic and genuine questionings of the 
mind and heart. 

A man who undertook to write a biography of 
a great man, some time ago, complained that in con- 
ferring with large numbers of friends of the dis- 
tinguished person, he was astonished to find an utter 
lack on their part of memory of interesting and pic- 
turesque incidents connected with a man who had 
himself been a very strong and rugged and in- 
tensely alive personality. Summing up his remarks 
on the subject, he said, " What is the use of trying 
to write a biography with such mummies for wit- 
nesses ! They would have seen just as much if they 
had had nothing but glass eyes in their heads." 

But how can you expect anything else of people, 
when, during the fresh growing years of childhood, 
they are met at every question with " Don't mind," 
and " Don't bother me now," and " Do stop such 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



foolish questions ! " and kindred expressions that are 
forever shoved down over their heads as a lamp ex- 
tinguisher is over a light. Their originality is ex- 
tinguished in the same way, and then we wonder 
why it does not burn in later life. Now and then 
we see a child brought up in a different manner, and 
how different is the result ! What a gold mine, for 
example, for a historical writer or a biographer, is 
growing in a little boy who was asked by his teacher 
to describe a bat. The reply was, " He's a nasty 
little mouse, with india-rubber wings, and shoe- 
string tail, and bites hard ! " The more you study 
that definition, the more certain you will be that the 
boy's imagination had not been dwarfed. 

A child has a right to loving discipline. Children 
cannot be sinned against more grievously than to 
permit them to grow up to manhood or womanhood 
without learning to obey. A lady once advertised 
in a New York City paper for a German governess 
" to mind a little girl three years old." The error 
here, no doubt, was in the English, and not in the 
purpose, but there are many homes where it could be 
taken literally. Strong, self-controlling men and 
women are never produced except through wise and 
loving discipline. An ignorant negro was once over- 
heard in his prayers to say, " Let me so lib dat when 
I die I may hab manners, dat I may know what to 
say when I see my heabenly Lord ! " If men and 
women are to have good manners, taking that word 



CHILDREN'S RIGHTS. 



in the noble sense, they must acquire them through 
discipline as they pass through childhood. 

The emphasis needs to be put on the fact that the 
discipline must be loving. A child who obeys the 
parent only because he fears punishment, is simply 
a slave, cowering under the lash of one whom he re- 
gards as a tyrant. Children are sometimes driven 
into being cowards and liars through fear, but such 
a feeling will never be aroused in a child where in- 
telligent love guides the discipline. We cannot, as 
parents or teachers, put from us our responsibility 
to develop in children the power to govern them- 
selves. Parents never make a greater mistake than 
to imagine that they run the risk of losing the love 
of their children by holding them closely to obedi- 
ence, to right control. Somebody has well said, 
" Children never love those who spoil them." 

A friend of mine, a wise woman who has success- 
fully brought up a large family who are proving 
to be helpers in the world, and a family who are 
devotedly loyal to their mother, told me this incident 
about one of her boys. She said that, one day, when 
he was small, he climbed up on a large box in the 
room to play. She told him to get down, as he was 
in danger of falling off and hurting himself. But 
he plead with her so hard, that, against her better 
judgment, she let him continue to play there. Sure 
enough, after a little, the boy became absorbed in his 
play and came tumbling over backwards on to the 



120 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



floor, striking on the back of his head and getting 
a very severe hurt. As soon as he could make him- 
self intelligible through his tears and cries, he ex- 
claimed, very reproachfully, " You ought not to have 
let me stay on that box ! You should have made me 
get down ! " The mother said, " That was a good 
lesson to me, and in later years I often reminded 
my boy of it in more serious matters." Many a man 
is in the penitentiary, and many a woman has made 
shipwreck of life, because a fond but unwise parent 
sinned against them in their childhood by permitting 
them to grow up without learning the greatest lesson 
of life — obedience. 

Children have a right to a simple, straightfor- 
ward, wholesome Christianity. It ought to be as 
natural as is the love between father and mother 
and the children. When it is so, religion, gentle, 
all-pervading, all-comforting, is the very atmosphere 
the child breathes. Such children grow up in the 
kingdom of heaven, to be pillars for righteousness, 
wherever they may dwell. There ought never to be 
a home where childhood is being developed, without 
the worship of God being as open and regular as the 
manifestation of paternal sympathy and love. The 
religious nature must be fed just as the physical and 
intellectual life is nourished. Family worship, of 
some simple and sweet kind, ought to be a part of 
the day's round in every Christian home. No won- 
der we grow material and worldly if we devote our- 



CHILDREN'S RIGHTS. 



121 



selves only to worldly and material things, and give 
the spiritual in our natures no chance to express 
itself. Our lives will be dominated by spirituality 
when every day is dominated by sincere and loving 
worship of God and humble faith in divine guidance. 
Much depends on the minister, vastly important is 
the Sunday-school teacher, of large interest is the 
teacher in the public school and the college; but, 
after all, the human destiny, for time and eternity, 
is more largely determined in the home, and by the 
spirit which controls there, than anywhere else. 

I never speak on Children's Day but my heart 
goes out in sympathy and fellowship with those who 
have had loaned to them little visitors from the sky 
who have soon been chilled by the air of earth and 
have flown away again to be with God. It is hard, 
many times, to sit with empty arms and aching 
hearts while others talk of the responsibilities and 
hopes and blessings which their children bring. 
And there are others of us, who still have arrows in 
our quiver at home, but have lost out of our flock 
for a little while one or more that were very dear 
to us, and who are always in our memory and in our 
hearts. I think it ought to comfort us to know that 
the good God who loaned them to us for a while, 
and then in his loving wisdom called them back 
again to the heavenly home, watches over them, and 
keeps them safely and happily against the day when 
we shall see them again. The sweetest word of com- 



122 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



fort I have seen for a long time for such a loss is a 
little poem written by Gertrude Curtiss, who sings : 

" There is many a weary, footsore lamb 
That no tender arms enfold ; 

But forever at rest 

On the Shepherd's breast 
Are our wee white lambs in the Fold. 

" There are storms for those on the mountain side, 
There is snow and bitter cold ; 

But safe and warm 

And sheltered from storm 
Are our wee white lambs in the Fold. 

" There are many evils lurking without, 
There are dangers of which we are told; 

But safe from all harm 

And free from alarm 
Are our wee white lambs in the Fold. 

" There is many a lamb that has gone astray, 
There are wanderers young and old ; 

But pure and sweet, 

At the Shepherd's feet 
Lie our wee white lambs in the Fold. 

" O hearts that are mourning a little one gone, 
That are longing its face to behold, 

Thank God for the care 

That protects them there, — 
The wee white lambs in the Fold." 



XII. 



The Liberty to do Wrong. 

" I proclaim a liberty for you, saith the Lord, to the sword, 
to the pestilence, and to the famine." — Jeremiah 34: 17. 

The irony of this text is terrible. These people 
had sinned against God. They had promised to 
serve him by giving liberty to their slaves ; but they 
had broken their vows, having concluded that the 
command of God was too rigorous, and that, instead 
of giving freedom to their bond servants, they would 
give themselves liberty from obedience to the Divine 
commandment. The result was that God sent his 
brave prophet to tell them that they should have 
liberty, but it would be a kind of liberty that they 
would not enjoy. They had seized the liberty to 
sin, and the punishment would be liberty to perish 
by the sword and the pestilence and the famine. 

We have suggested here a very important and 
sadly interesting theme. It is also a timely theme, 
for this is a day in which men are talking much 
about breaking away from the laws of God. Even 
men who claim to be leaders in social and religious 
reform are proposing to reform the world by giv- 



I2 4 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



ing themselves and it liberty from those great funda- 
mental laws of God on which the safety and nobility 
of human character and life have always depended. 
There seems to be in the air a vicious outbreak 
against all law. The cry for liberty, which has often 
been so noble and so holy, is in our time used for 
the basest and most ignoble purposes. We can see 
illustrations of this rebellious spirit against law in 
the way in which such institutions as the liquor 
saloon and its nefarious brood, the gambling hell 
and the brothel, defy the law in our large towns and 
cities. And these institutions which prey upon the 
life of the community, sucking the blood out of the 
veins of society, are able in many ways to defy 
law, and to bring righteous laws into contempt, be- 
cause there appears to be a growing spirit of anarchy 
and lawlessness in circles which ought to be wiser. 
We ought to learn from history that nothing is so 
dangerous to the rights of the people as a prevailing 
spirit of lawlessness. The law is the fortress of the 
people's liberties. Especially is that true in our own 
land, where the laws are made by the people, and 
only disaster and ruin can come from giving way 
to lawlessness. 

We may see another illustration in the cases of 
would-be reformers who propose to abrogate the 
laws of the Bible and of Jesus Christ in regard to 
marriage and the family. The long catalogue of 
divorce cases is constantly augmented by the agita- 



THE LIBERTY TO DO WRONG. 125 



tion and discussion which increases this spirit of so- 
cial unrest, and constantly dulls the sense of moral 
responsibility. Every inroad that is made into the 
sacredness and stability of the marriage tie and of 
the family life is in the direction of license and law- 
lessness which can carry only disaster in its train. 
The man who demands the liberty to do wrong is 
sure to get the worst of it in the end. The old 
declaration of the Apostle Paul, " Whatsoever a 
man soweth, that shall he also reap," was the utter- 
ance of a great truth which is just as vitally true 
to-day as it has ever been. The laboring men who 
help on the revolt against the Sunday laws which 
insure a day of rest and genuine recreation, only 
hasten a liberty which means slavery. It can only 
end in the liberty for the laborer to work seven days 
in the week and become but a cog in the wheel of 
unbroken toil. All history shows that Sunday dese- 
cration, and the defiance of law which breaks down 
Sunday protection, soon end in a Sunday of work 
for the laboring people. So it is true that a breaking 
away from the laws which protect and make sacred 
the family life lead to degradation, physical, social 
and moral. The liberty to do wrong always falls 
with terrific force in punishment on the wrongdoer. 

But my purpose is rather to emphasize the great 
lesson of the text in its relation to the personal char- 
acter of the individual. Man is a free-will agent. 
He may choose his career. He may use his liberty 



126 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



to do right, or, as a horse, mad at the restrictions of 
his harness or his load, seizes the bit between his 
teeth and dashes down the crowded street, spread- 
ing alarm and disaster in his path, so a man may 
seize the liberty to do wrong, and for the time defy 
the laws of God and man. But it always means ruin. 

Dr. W. L. Watkinson tells how he was once con- 
ducted through a large prison. The jailer had a 
great many keys, and every little way there was an 
iron gate in the path, every few steps were locks, 
bolts and bars, dim corridors, grim cells, frowning 
gratings, suggesting the dreary treadmill in which 
the prisoners lived. It was a painful tour, with no 
sense of liberty, only an overwhelming sense of law. 
The prisoners had defied the laws and seized the 
liberty to break them, and in so doing they had 
plunged themselves into the liberty of this prison- 
house. From the jail Dr. Watkinson went to see 
the conservatories of a very wealthy man, and he 
was interested to notice that this lover of flowers 
and plants carried as many keys as the jailer, and at 
every few steps was unlocking and locking doors. 
But the consciousness of the visitors was entirely dif- 
ferent. Each new scene into which they entered was 
a chamber of beauty. Now it was a cool fernery, 
full of delicate forms ; then a house of stately palms ; 
now it was a crystal palace of roses or passion flow- 
ers ; then a choice shrine of wonderful orchids ; now 
an orangery; then a vinery, gorgeous with purple 



THE LIBERTY TO DO WRONG. 



127 



and golden clusters. It was all loveliness, fragrance, 
and delight. This time the keys were golden ; they 
made music as they turned. Whenever a door was 
unlocked, it opened into a realm of beauty. Every 
time one was locked it was to make that realm of 
glory secure. The jailer with his keys seemed like 
some horrid spectre; the gardener with his keys 
appeared like an angel of Paradise. 

There could not be a better illustration of our 
theme. Obey God's law, and his statutes become a 
delight; they blossom into beauty and fragrance. 
The Sabbath becomes the parlor-day of civilization, 
into which all beautiful and holy things are gath- 
ered, when men and women wait upon it with holy 
reverence. The laws of marriage and the family 
produce the sweetest picture of heaven that the hu- 
man mind can conceive and the human heart can 
cherish, when obeyed with loving fidelity. The 
laws of the human body obeyed mean health and 
strength, guaranteeing clearness of mental percep- 
tion. The laws of the heart and life obeyed mean 
pure thoughts, wholesome imaginations, happy 
memories, peaceful meditations, hopeful inspiration 
for the future. God's law obeyed in childhood 
means a happy and vigorous youth. The divine 
laws obeyed in youth mean a strong and splendid 
manhood. Obedience to God's will in manhood 
means an old age glorified by memories of good 
deeds, of faithful services rendered, and holy friend- 



128 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



ships formed ; and such an old age gives promise of 
a triumphant entrance into heaven beyond. To seize 
the liberty to break God's laws, to sin against his 
wisdom and his love, means to change the garden of 
life into a prison-house. Are any of you who are 
reading this turning away from the demand of 
Christ for your obedience, and your open confession 
and service, because you want more liberty, more 
freedom for yourself? If so, I can assure you that 
there is no liberty which you secure by refusing the 
claims of Christ which will not be the liberty of the 
sword and the pestilence and the famine. It is 
impossible that Christ could ask anything of you 
that does not mean your best and truest good, and 
for you to take the liberty of disobeying him is to 
take a liberty that will mean bondage in the end. 

A ministerial acquaintance of mine tells of a 
friend who was very dear to him, and whom, with 
all the powers of love and persuasion he possessed, 
he sought to win away from the beginning of cer- 
tain evil habits, and to lead to become openly a Chris- 
tian. But he failed, and the man went on, in what 
he called " the path of liberty." The result was that, 
a few years later, his old friend, the minister, was 
summoned to his death-bed. His dissipation had 
brought him to an untimely end. With great sor- 
row the minister hastened to obey the call. He en- 
tered the room where the man lay on a couch, in full 
every-day dress. The minister put out his hand, and 



THE LIBERTY TO DO WRONG. 



129 



the other man grasped it excitedly, and said, " Sit 
down, sit down right there." He sat down. Then 
the man lying on the sofa said, " Wife, I wish you 
would take these strings off me. There are strings 
spun all around my body. I wish you would take 
them off me." The minister saw it was delirium. 
The wife knelt beside him, and assured him he was 
not bound, and the minister knelt beside him and 
prayed, but he died in that horrible delirium, beg- 
ging them to take off the bands that bound him. 
O my friends, are any of you weaving cords of evil 
habit that, after a while, are to wrap you round and 
round, until you are so completely held by them that 
you are a helpless prisoner to your sin ? Remember 
that every day of liberty to do wrong assumed by 
you hastens that terrible consummation. The time 
to settle with an evil habit is when you are tempted 
to form it. Deny it, refuse it then, ere it has been 
pampered and has grown strong by years of self- 
indulgence. Some poet, with clear insight into the 
tragedies of the human heart, represents one who 
has long yielded to sin as crying out in his despair : 

" Oh, could I go back to the fork of the road — 
Back over the long miles I have carried the load ; 
Back to the place where I had to decide, 
By this sign or that sign my footsteps to guide ; 

" Back to the sorrow, back to the care, 
Back to the place where the future was fair ; 
Oh, were I there now, decision to make, 
My Father in heaven, which road would I take? 



130 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



" Oh, could I go back to the fork of the road 
With the wisdom I've gathered in bearing this load, 
A different decision, dear God, would I make, 
And the path of the righteous my footsteps should take. 

" The broad road of pleasure no glory hath won, 
It hath brought me to anguish — my whole life undone ; 
And now, at the end, ah, 'tis wretched and drear ! 
My heart is nigh breaking, I tremble with fear. 

" The road is so tangled with brier and thorn, 
To find the way back I'm ever o'er worn ; 
Deep sunk in despair, I am 'wildered and lost : 
Of choosing the wrong road how bitter the cost ! 

" If God in his mercy would show me the way 
To return, to return to the light of youth's day, 
My road I would choose by the sign of the Word — 
With Jesus my Leader, my Way, and my Lord." 

You cannot go back to the cross-roads again, but 
you can make to-day the day of your salvation by 
repenting of your sins and throwing yourself on the 
pure mercy of God in Jesus Christ. 

A man in one of the Western States applied to the 
legislature to change his name, for a singular reason. 
He had been for years a notorious liar, but deter- 
mined to reform, and resolved never to utter a false- 
hood again. So thoroughly was he changed that 
he did not wish to be known by his old name, and so 
applied to the legislature for a new one. That in- 
cident is suggestive of the promise which Christ 
makes to us in the Book of Revelation, when he 
says, " Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in 
the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out : 



THE LIBERTY TO DO WRONG. 131 

and I will write upon him the name of my God, and 
the name of the city of my God, . . . and I will 
write upon him my new name." Make that prom- 
ise your own this very hour ! 



XIII. 



The Uncut Leaves of the Book 
of Life. 

" And I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not ; I 
will lead them in paths that they have not known ; I will make 
darkness light before them, and crooked things straight. 
These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them." — 
Isaiah 42 : 16. 

The marvel and mystery of human life add much 
to its interest. Although men have been living for 
thousands of years in the world, and the paths of 
love and hope and fear and hate and ambition are 
trodden knee-deep in ruts from the hurrying feet of 
many generations, yet every new life is a separate 
study of Almighty God, and every new human heart 
looks into a future full of mystery and wonder and 
marvelous possibilities. None of us who have 
grown to maturity can fail to look back over the 
path and see, here and there along the way, how 
near we came to being something very different 
from what we are. If we had taken that road to the 
right, or the other that allured us from the left, how 
far away from where we now stand would we be! 
And sometimes we marvel to know what there was 



THE UNCUT LEAVES OF THE BOOK OF LIFE. 133 



behind the gate, the latch of which we held in our 
hands and almost lifted, but did not. Or, to change 
the figure back to our theme, we came to a place in 
the book of life where the leaves were not yet cut, 
and we turned from them and did not cut them. 
What did those pages hold? We stand to-day be- 
fore other uncut leaves, and we know not what is 
printed on them, and we scarcely dare to read fur- 
ther. Will we cut them, or will we turn away from 
them and leave the secret forever unread? The 
theme has been suggested to me by Clara Weir's 
earnest poem : 

" Oh, a wonderful book is the book of life, 

Whether the binding be rich and fair 
With luminations, and gildings rife 

On the finest vellum, thick and rare, 
Or whether the binding be poor and mean, 

Faded and cheap, and flimsy withal, 
The veriest prose that was ever seen, 

To be found for a trifle in any stall — 
And still the discerning spirit grieves 
To know that each volume has uncut leaves. 

" Tis a wonderful work from a Master's hand, 

Where comedy, tragedy, smiles and tears 
Swiftly tread on the shining sand, 

As the scenes are shifted by passing years ; 
And there from the light of day are hid 

All things beautiful, good and fair, 
In the brief enclosure, from lid to lid, 

Whatever the heart desires is there — 
But, oh, how the spirit grieves and grieves 
O'er the pitiful pathos of uncut leaves. 



134 THE KING'S STEWARDS. 

" There is fair Success with her beckoning hand, 

And Health, with her rosy and laughing face, 
There is home, and peace, and a smiling land, 

Where heartache never can find a place. 
There are beautiful children between the leaves — 

The crowning glory of motherhood, 
And a wreath of love for each heart that grieves, 

A love that is never understood — 
Yet forever the watchful spirit grieves 
O'er the mystery here of our uncut leaves. 

" For every volume, whate'er it be, 

Has leaves which never can see the light, 
Their gracious beauty and symmetry 

Are never disclosed to the longing sight ; 
And lives are clouded, and eyes are dim, 

For lack of that which is near to all ; 
With those uncut leaves they are folded in, 

And they cannot respond to prayer or call — 
And throughout life the spirit grieves 
For only one glimpse of those uncut leaves. 

" When shall we see that Author's hand 

Which fashioned the volume we hold in fee — 
With a wisdom we cannot understand, 

Above and beyond our mastery — 
Cuts with a loving care each leaf, 

Never forgetting the end in view, 
Fills out each story, however brief, 

With a kind intent and a purpose true — 
And who can doubt that the Author grieves 
When we question his love by our uncut leaves?" 

Let us study some of the places in the book of life 
where we are likely to leave uncut leaves to our great 
disadvantage. One of these is in our Bible reading. 
To a great many people who count themselves Chris- 



THE UNCUT LEAVES OF THE BOOK OF LIFE. 135 

tians, and are trying to be such, their Bible is a book 
of uncut leaves. Suppose your Bible had come to 
you with all the leaves uncut five years ago, and there 
had been none cut since except those you have read 
and pondered for Scriptural help and blessing; how 
much of your Bible would be to-day a book of uncut 
leaves ? It has been practically a closed book to you. 
We talk about the great blessing of Protestantism in 
securing for us an open Bible. But what good is an 
open Bible with the leaves uncut and unread? No 
Christian man can afford to thrust himself into the 
business life of the day without a spiritual, health- 
giving breath from off the ocean of God's Word. Dr. 
Wayland Hoyt beautifully says that the reading of 
the Bible every day brings into life a breeze and a 
touch of God, of recognition of him, of motto for 
him. We often hear a man say, " My wife reads her 
Bible every day." The inference is that he does not 
find time to do it. But the man who goes to the 
foundry or the shop or the store, and is thrust into 
association with worldly and wicked men, needs the 
reading of the Bible to get God and the thought of 
him as a source of strength in his heart, as surely as 
his wife needs it to sustain her in her round of house- 
hold duties. It is always a bad sign, and one that 
is full of threatening of danger, when a Christian 
business man has made up his mind that he has not 
time to read his Bible every day before going to 
work, and in the evening before giving himself up to 



136 THE KING'S STEWARDS. 

slumber. A man's religion will smother in that kind 
of an atmosphere. O brothers, sisters, cut a new 
leaf in your Bible every day, and refresh yourselves 
with the stored-up spiritual oxygen which you will 
find there. There is life in it that will sustain you 
amid all the temptations and trials of your daily ex- 
perience. 

When we leave the Bible uncut, we are almost 
sure to make the next great blunder of failing to cut 
the leaves that open to us the realm of simple and 
familiar communion with God and prayer to him. 
Many people say prayers every day, but they are 
formal and ceremonial, with a certain awe and sub- 
limity and reverence about them that are uplifting, 
but lacking the sweet familiarity of a child's commu- 
nication with a father, a certain atmosphere of lov- 
ing confidence. 

Professor Henry Drummond tells the story of a 
little girl who once said to her father : " Papa, I 
want you to say something to God for me, something 
I want to tell him very much. But I have such a 
little voice that I don't think he could hear it away up 
in heaven; but you have a big man's voice, and he 
will be sure to hear you." And Drummond says 
that the wise father took his little girl in his arms 
and told her that even though God were at that mo- 
ment surrounded by all his holy angels, sounding 
on their golden harps, and singing to him one of the 
grandest and sweetest songs of praise that was ever 



THE UNCUT LEAVES OF THE BOOK OF LIFE. 137 



heard in heaven, he was sure that he would say to 
them, " Hush ! stop the singing for a little while. 
There's a little girl away down on the earth who 
wants to whisper something in my ear." Cut the 
leaves that open into that realm of sweet and loving 
communion with your Heavenly Father. It is 
awful for us to live with prayer practically a sealed 
book, with the dust gathering on the edges of its 
uncut leaves. 

There is another book where we are always 
tempted to fail to cut the leaves, and that is where 
we face a duty that seems hard for us. But if we do 
turn away and fail to find what is behind those uncut 
leaves, we are certain to lose largely. Who can tell 
how much Moses lost when God ordered him down 
into Egypt to speak to Pharaoh his will, and 
lead the children of Israel out of bondage? There 
was no thought of Aaron at first. God called on 
Moses to go alone in his strength. But Moses was 
afraid; he said to God, " I stutter and stammer; I 
never could make a public speech before a king." 
And so he refused to go, and he remained a stutterer 
and a stammerer until he died. What eloquence of 
speech, such as the world had never heard, was shut 
up in those uncut leaves of possibility Moses never 
found out. Suppose John Howard had started back 
in affright when there was borne in upon his con- 
science the great privilege and duty of helping to 
modify the horrors and cruelties of European pris- 



138 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



ons. He never would have known the compensa- 
tions and glories which God had written down for 
him. Suppose Florence Nightingale had shut her 
eyes to the vision of Mercy brooding above the sol- 
dier's cot on the bloody battle-fields of the Crimea, 
and had remained luxuriously at home in England. 
The world never would have heard of her, and all 
that beautiful record of heroic and Christlike service 
would have been a closed book until now. Let God's 
message come home to each one of our hearts to-day. 
It may be that before you there lies a duty undone. 
God has been rolling it on your conscience. He has 
been stirring your heart about some unrighted 
wrong. Your soul is moved to the depths, and yet 
it seems so hard and the path so blind and so un- 
certain that you dare not cut the closed leaf of to- 
morrow and go blindly to do the duty to which God 
calls you. But you cannot refuse to do your duty 
without loss, and loss infinitely greater than you are 
now able to estimate. 

Mrs. J. K. Barney, the world-famous prison 
worker, tells a story which illustrates this great truth. 
She says that, years ago, she visited a Western town, 
and the lady who met her at the station said, " You 
must excuse the miserable old carriage I am going to 
take you in, for I do not like to employ any other 
driver." On seeing the uncared-for look of both 
carriage and horse, with tied-up harness, she did 
wonder, and still more at the slovenly, red-faced 



THE UNCUT LEAVES OF THE BOOK OF LIFE. 139 



driver. However, he drove the ladies up to the 
home of the hostess safely, and as they passed up the 
walk she stopped to speak to him. Overtaking Mrs. 
Barney, they entered the house together, and as the 
door closed she lifted a tearful face to her guest, with 
the plea, " Will you stop right here and pray for that 
man?" "What is it?" she asked, for she knew 
there must be something back of that. As they 
dropped upon their knees, she sobbed out, " Oh, he 
used to be in my Sunday-school class." The sub- 
stance of the story was this : Years before, five boys 
were gathered into a Sunday-school from the street. 
They were given into this lady's care, and she felt a 
pride in showing what she could do. She taught the 
lesson after a fashion, but with no real conception of 
personal responsibility; and when sometimes it was 
urged home upon her that she ought to use her per- 
sonal friendship and influence with these boys to se- 
riously lead them individually to give their hearts to 
God and begin the Christian life, she put it from her 
as too hard a task, and refused to even earnestly con- 
sider it. Finally she left home and was away for 
five years. During her absence, she waked up to the 
possibilities of Christian service and often thought 
of her boys. On her return she began a search, and 
finally came upon this one, the cab-driver, who was 
noticeably under the influence of liquor. He seemed 
glad to see her, but shook his head to her proposition 
to sign a temperance pledge. " It's no use now ; you 



140 THE KING'S STEWARDS. 

missed your chance to save me. You could have got 
me to do that once, but it's too late now/' To her in- 
quiries about the other boys, he replied, " Two of us 
is dead, two of us is in prison, and I ain't worth sav- 
ing. I tell you, lady, you missed your chance with 
us." Years had passed away, and try as she would, 
she had not been able to save the man who as a boy 
would have been like clay in her hands. My friend, 
if there is before you the opportunity to do good to 
some soul, though it be at the cost of personal com- 
fort and self-sacrifice, in God's name I pray you do 
not fail to cut the leaves of that book of service ; the 
blessings therein are greater than you can dream. 

Perhaps you are standing before the closed leaves 
of the Book of Personal Salvation. As I speak, you 
are conscious that personally you are a sinner against 
God, and that you know nothing by experience of the 
power of Jesus Christ to forgive sin and to bring the 
breath of a new life of righteousness to the heart. 
Cut the leaves of that book this very hour ! 

Lady Ann Erskine was once passing through a 
London crowd in her carriage. Borne on the breeze, 
there came to her the voice of a preacher, and she 
asked her coachman to drive near so that she might 
hear what he was saying. Rowland Hill it was, and 
his eye grasped the situation as she drew near. Sud- 
denly he stopped his discourse, and, after a noticeable 
pause, said : " Listen ! Here is a titled lady. The 
auction of eternity has begun, and there are offers 



THE UNCUT LEAVES OF THE BOOK OF LIFE. 141 



being made for her of high birth to-night. The 
devil says, ' I will give pleasure, I will give a presen- 
tation to the court, I will give luxury, I will give all 
the attractions of the world for her !' Will the ham- 
mer fall ? Hark, there is another voice that bids. It 
is the voice of Jesus. It says, ' I will give my life for 
her, I will give my precious blood for her. I that 
was born the Son of God, that came from glory, will 
give myself for her sinful and never-dying soul.' 
What is to be the decision? Who is to get her? 
Now or never !" 

" Drive on," said Lady Erskine to her coachman. 
But in her room that night, after a great struggle, 
she put aside high birth and society life and her 
pride of blood, and accepted Jesus Christ. If she had 
not done that, that beautiful Christian life which was 
such a blessing and benediction to her own time 
would have been forever a sealed book. How shall 
it be with you? Your Book of Life is within your 
reach. Will you give your heart to Christ and let 
him open its leaves for you now ? 



XIV. 



The Secret of a Happy Day. 

" The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him." — 
Psalm 25 : 14. 

Frances Ridley Havergae, whose life and 
writings have so greatly blessed mankind, and 
whose poems have often come as a word in season 
to him that is weary, studied the words of this text 
until they awoke music in her heart, and she car- 
olled forth one of the most beautiful of all her 
songs, entitled " The Secret of a Happy Day." 
Before we study some of the characteristics of a 
happy day, as outlined by the poet, let us first com- 
fort ourselves with the song itself: 

" Just to let thy Father do 

What he will; 
Just to know that he is true, 

And be still. 
Just to follow hour by hour 

As he leadeth ; 
Just to draw the moment's power 

As it needeth. 
Just to trust him, this is all ! 

Then the day will surely be 
Peaceful, whatso'er befall, 

Bright and blessed, calm and free. 



THE SECRET OF A HAPPY DAY. 



" Just to let him speak to thee 

Through his Word, 
Watching, that his voice may be 

Clearly heard, 
Just to tell him everything, 

As it rises, 
And at once to him to bring 

All surprises. 
Just to listen and to stay 

Where you cannot miss his voice. 
This is all ! and thus to-day, 

Communing so, you shall rejoice. 

" Just to ask him what to do 

All the day, 
And to make you quickened through 

To obey. 
Just to know the needed grace 

He bestoweth, 
Every bar of time and place 

Overfloweth. 
Just to take thy orders straight 

From the Master's own command. 
Blessed day ! when thus we wait 

Always at our Sovereign's hand. 

" Just to recollect his love, 

Always true; 
Always shining from above, 

Always new. 
Just to recognize its light 

All-enfolding ; 
Just to claim its present might, 

All-upholding. 
Just to know it as thy own, 

That no power can take away; 
, Is not this enough alone 

For the gladness of the day? 



144 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



" Just to trust, and yet to ask 

Guidance still ; 
Take the training or the task, 

As he will. 
Just to take the loss or gain 

As he sends it; 
Just to take the joy or pain 

As he lends it; 
He who formed thee for his praise 

Will not miss the gracious aim; 
So to-day and all thy days 

Shall be molded for the same. 

" Just to leave in his dear hand 

Little things ; 
All we cannot understand, 

All that stings. 
Just to let him take the care 

Sorely pressing, 
Finding all we let him bear 

Changed to blessing. 
This is all ! and yet the way 

Marked by him who loves thee best: 
Secret of a happy day, 

Secret of his promised rest." 

I am sure we cannot fail to get comfort if we 
study earnestly some of the rules laid down by this 
brilliant and spiritual woman as guaranteeing a 
happy day. The first suggestion is that a rebellious 
life can never be happy, but that a complete sur- 
render to God is certain to bring peace. This is the 
first note struck. 

" Just to let thy Father do 
What he will ; 



THE SECRET OF A HAPPY DAY. 



145 



Just to know that he is true, 
And be still." 

So long as in our thoughts we rebel against the Lord, 
the spirit will chafe and fret ; and however silent we 
may be about it, there will be no real peace and com- 
fort of soul. But the moment we surrender our- 
selves completely to God, entirely willing to do what 
he wishes, accepting his will as the best thing that 
could happen, all chafing and fretting and discord 
will cease in our hearts. 

Campbell Morgan has coined a new word, or 
rather, adapted an old one, to bring out the idea of 
consecration. He says that we ought to " abandon" 
our lives unto God. He means by this what was 
meant by the old, much-abused word, " consecra- 
tion." That is exactly the idea of the poem we are 
studying. If we just give up our will to God, to do 
what he asks of us, to accept what he gives us, to 
throw ourselves with whole-hearted enthusiasm 
into his purpose for us, then we shall have peace, 
and we shall have one of the secrets of a happy day. 

A second suggestion is that faith in God's provi- 
dential care cannot fail to give peace. This is put 
in a very picturesque and suggestive way : 

" Just to tell him everything 
As it rises, 
And at once to him to bring 
All surprises." 

What a beautiful way of putting it that is, and what 



146 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



an insight into life it shows! The hardest things 
for us to bear are the surprises that come to us in the 
way of disappointment. Some trials we have been 
anticipating, and we are braced for the shock; but 
other troubles come upon us like a cyclone on a west- 
ern prairie. It surely will comfort us to feel that 
God is not surprised. Any new storm that rises on 
the horizon, that we have not been looking for, we 
can turn over to God. The Lord's mercies are new 
every morning, and they can take care of these new 
and surprising difficulties. Do not imagine it is all 
over with you because there comes upon you some 
sudden weakness or depression of spirit, which 
makes you cowardly and ready to faint. Did not 
Elijah break down and go to the desert in the midst 
of the greatest work of his life? But he came back 
through God's mercies to greater triumphs. 

There is a touching little story of the artist 
Raphael, that when he was in the midst of his work 
on what is perhaps the greatest painting ever cre- 
ated by man, the Transfiguration, he was depressed 
by sudden and awful discouragement. He sat 
down and burst into tears, and said, " I am not a 
painter; I cannot complete it." But God was good 
to him, and after a while the tired nerves were 
rested, the brain got back its clear vision, the heart 
was inspired again, and the hand became skilful for 
the wonderful work of creation. Let God take care 
of the " surprises." 



THE SECRET OF A HAPPY DAY. 



147 



There is another interesting suggestion here, that 
in order to find happiness day by day we must have 
in our hearts the assurance that God will give us 
added grace at any time we need it for emergencies. 
A man can be perfectly happy though he feels that 
to-day he has not the grace to bear some great bur- 
den that does not yet rest on his shoulders, provided 
he believes that God will answer his prayer, " Give us 
this day our daily bread." Miss Havergal puts it 
this way : 

" Just to know the needed grace 
He bestoweth, 
Every bar of time and place 
Overfloweth." 

You do not know how to appreciate that poetical 
figure unless you have known something about 
steamboating on southern or western rivers. The 
difficulties of life are compared to sand-bars in the 
river. When there is a long dry spell, the sand-bar, 
which is far out of sight in the depth in the full-flood 
tide of the winter or springtime currents, comes 
close to the surface in the hot summer months, when 
the river is low. Here comes the steamer up the 
river ; yonder, just ahead, is the gravel-bar or the 
sand-bar which the captain fears, and he puts a 
sailor out on the side of the deck to drop a line 
weighted with a lump of lead, and to call out the 
number of feet of water over the bar. If it keeps 
deep enough to cross the critical point, and begins 



148 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



to grow deeper again, the captain utters a sigh of 
relief. That is the figure of the poet. We shall 
be happy, no matter what sand-bars are ahead of us, 
if we know, deep down in our hearts, that in times 
of greater need God will give us more grace, that 
he will give us enough of the water of life to over- 
flow " every bar of time and place." 

Our poet declares that if we would fill each day 
with gladness, we must keep our hearts warm by re- 
flecting on the personal love of God : 

"Just to recollect his love, 
Always true; 
Always shining from above, 
Always new." 

If we keep the great truth of God's love for us con- 
stantly alive in our hearts by meditations on his 
goodness, we shall have a light in us which will illu- 
minate every dark place. 

Rev. F. B. Meyer says that one night in London 
he got into an omnibus, where the darkness was only 
dimly illuminated by one weak oil lamp. He paid 
the fare, received a punctured ticket to indicate how 
far he might go, and being very weary, fell into a 
kind of uncomfortable doze. Suddenly the inspec- 
tor, whose habit it is to waylay the omnibuses and 
leap on them unawares, with the object of testing 
the honesty of the conductors, sprang on the steps, 
entered, and asked the passengers to show their tick- 
ets. Meyer said to himself, It is quite useless for 



THE SECRET OF A HAPPY DAY. 149 

you to ask this ; for, if we produce them, there is not 
light enough to indicate whether they have been 
duly stamped. While he was meditating, he no- 
ticed that the man struck a little spring on his breast, 
and suddenly a globe of delicate glass was filled with 
the glow of electric light which shone like a star on 
his face, and on the passengers, and illumined the 
entire vehicle. It was very significant to notice 
that the man carried on his own heart and breast the 
light by which he did his work. It seemed to Dr. 
Meyer to illustrate the text, " In thy light shall we 
see light." If we keep our hearts warm in the love 
of God, so that we are able to exult in the personal 
consciousness that God loves us, we shall carry with 
us everywhere a glow by which the darkness will be 
made light and obscure things become visible. 

Another feature of a happy day, according to 
Miss Havergal, is to realize that life is, after all, a 
rehearsal, a training ; and that the training we get in 
defeat is just as valuable for the great purposes of 
life as training given in success. If you are getting 
ready for a ball game, it makes no difference 
whether you get beaten in the rehearsal or not, so 
long as you become skilful in the art of the game. 
If we thus keep the great end in view, defeat cannot 
spoil our happiness. We are getting ready for 
heaven, and wide observation and experience show 
us that the most beautiful spiritual graces are often, 
like the lotus flowers in Japan, grown in dark places 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



of poverty and out of the most forbidding condi- 
tions. Who cares for the former surroundings 
when the beautiful flower is before him? and 
what will the Christian care when he stands in Zion 
and before God, with the Master's " well done" in 
his ears and his hand of loving benediction on his 
head ? We must keep that in our minds if we would 
make the dark days bright. How well the poet 
puts it: 

" Just to trust, and yet to ask 

Guidance still ; 
Take the training or the task, 

As he will. 
Just to take the loss or gain 

As he sends it; 
Just to take the joy or pain 

As he lends it." 

There is another suggestion, perhaps as important 
as any we have noticed, in assuring a happy day. 
That is, to let God take care of the little, gnat-like, 
mosquito-like annoyances of life. When you elim- 
inate these little petty things through which we so 
often give up our souls to wrath, we have taken out 
of the Christian's path a large part of his unhappi- 
ness. How beautifully she portrays it : 

" Just to leave in his dear hand 
Little things ; 
All we cannot understand, 
All that stings." 



XV. 



A Man who Found a Pot of Gold. 

" The kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field ; 
the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy- 
thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that 
field." — Matthew 13: 44. 

The story is told of one of the great mining kings 
of America, who now counts his wealth by many 
millions of dollars, that he got his start toward great 
wealth in a peculiar way. He received an intima- 
tion that a certain mine which was not regarded 
very highly by its owners, was nevertheless rich and 
might be made very profitable. He hired out to 
work in that mine, working there as a common 
miner for several months, until he had satisfied him- 
self of its great value. He then went away, sold all 
that he had and borrowed all he could get trusted 
for, and bought the mine, deriving from it great 
profit. 

But in the days of Christ all the East, where men 
and women had been living for hundreds and thou- 
sands of years, was more or less a gold field. There 
were in those days no safe deposit vaults, no banks 



152 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



where money could be cared for in safety, and very 
little opportunity to invest hoarded silver or gold in 
traffic. It was also an uncertain and turbulent 
world. There was only one way to make sure of 
wealth, and that was to hide it away. And so it be- 
came a common thing to hide gold and silver and 
precious stones in the earth. To this secret treas- 
ure-place the owner would go from time to time, 
and draw from it the riches that were needed for 
use. But as the wealth was not safe unless the hid- 
ing-place was kept secret, it would naturally occur 
very frequently that the sudden death of the one 
who had hidden the treasure would leave the secret 
of the hiding-place unknown. It was a warlike 
time, and predatory bands of robbers and invasions 
of an enemy would ever and anon drive the people 
from their homes. Many a man dying in battle 
would thus have no opportunity to make known to 
his friends the secret hiding-place of his treasure; 
and thus it became true, as Thomas Guthrey says, 
that " The earth became a bank in which was accum- 
ulated during the course of ages a vast amount of 
unclaimed deposits." 

So you see the story which Jesus brought to these 
people was full of teaching to them. There was 
not a man who heard him who, if called upon to 
testify, could not have borne witness to similar 
cases that had come under his own observation. 
Here is a man who lives down in the village. He 



A MAN WHO FOUND A POT OF GOLD. 153 

has his little house and home plot, and his team, 
but is not able to own a field yet. He rents a field 
on the shares. One morning he goes out to plough 
with his rude, old-fashioned, wooden plough, pulled 
through the earth slowly by a yoke of oxen. He is 
busy holding the plough in its place, so that it will 
scratch up the earth as much as possible, when, sud- 
denly, the point of the plough strikes something 
hard, and nearly throws him over on the oxen 
as they lunge forward. He supposes that it is a 
stone ; but as he digs the earth away his eyes stand 
out in astonishment, for he sees that his plough has 
torn into a bag of gold, and there are the rich coins 
before his eyes. He does not need to be told what 
has happened : he knows that here is an old un- 
claimed treasure, and that under the law it would 
belong to any man who owns the field. He is full 
of joy, but he is also full of fear and anxiety. He 
looks all around very stealthily. No one is in sight, 
no one has noticed his rich find. Carefully he 
replaces the sod, putting everything back so that it 
will look as before, carefully sticking the old plough 
in place, as though he had naturally left the field 
to go on some other business, and then hurries his 
oxen away to town. When he arrives there, he 
astonishes people with his efforts to sell out. He 
sells out his house and lot, sells his furniture, his 
oxen, sells everything he owns in the world. Of 
course, such forced sales never bring full value, and 



154 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



his neighbors think the man must be crazy to squan- 
der his goods in this way. But he knows what he 
is about; he has priced the field before and knows 
what he can buy it for ; and when, by forcing a sale 
on all his possessions, he secures the needed sum, 
he hurries away to the owner and buys the field. 
The people still say he is crazy. How is he going 
to live on that field without any house, and how is 
he going to work it without oxen? But all their 
hootings soon turn to admiration and praise. For 
as soon as the man gets a deed to the place, he goes 
back and upturns his rich treasure, and forever 
after his family are able to live in a much better 
house, and to enjoy more of comfort and luxury 
than they have ever dreamed of knowing before. 
Everybody agrees now that he was indeed a wise 
man when he sold all that he had, even at a sacrifice, 
to buy the field in which he had found the hidden 
treasure. 

Now the Lord Jesus Christ says that the kingdom 
of heaven is like that — that when we give up all our 
sins, and all our own selfish ambitions, and take him 
to be not only our Saviour, but our Lord and King, 
we exchange poverty for great riches ; that there is 
no better investment, indeed there is no investment 
in the world so good, as for a man to sell all that he 
has to depend upon and put his trust in Jesus Christ. 
And this is true from whatever standpoint you may 
look at the matter. Wealth is only a symbol of 



A MAN WHO FOUND A POT OF GOLD. 155 



comfort and happiness, and when it fails to bring 
these it is a. worthless thing; yet at how many points 
in life it does fail. But Jesus Christ has the power 
to give to our hearts a blessed comfort and peace 
which are beyond anything the greatest riches of 
the world can possibly bestow. He is the one friend 
that has power to comfort us in every emergency of 
life. The wealth which he gives us is the one sort 
of wealth which is honored everywhere, and can 
give a silver lining to every cloud in our experience. 

Dr. George C. Lorimer once ran into a bliz- 
zard in North Carolina when he was traveling on 
a lecture trip. The storm was sudden and unex- 
pected, and so unusually severe that it caused great 
suffering. 1 The train was delayed, and a number of 
passengers were obliged to wait on a side-track in an 
ordinary coach for several hours. Dr. Lorimer saw 
one man with his head bowed on the back of the seat 
before him. Finally, becoming hungry and impa- 
tient, the doctor moved up and down the car a few 
times, and then went outside to walk up and down 
the track. As he passed along, he came near three 
or four gentlemen, and overheard one of them say 
to another, " It is very sad." Dr. Lorimer said to 
himself, " Yes, it is sad to have all our plans upset 
in this way," and walked on. As he came around 
again in his walk, he heard one old gentleman 
remark, " But he don't complain." Then he tramped 
on again, saying, " There is one amiable person on 



i 5 6 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



board, then, who does not complain." As he came 
back once more, he heard the man say, very solemn- 
ly, " And he doesn't charge God foolishly. ,, Then 
Dr. Lorimer stopped and said, " Tell me, brother, 
who is this delightful soul we have on board who 
can stay on a side-track all these hours and yet re- 
tain his equilibrium ?" " Don't you know ?" they 
all cried. " That man in there with the bowed 
head. He is a railroad man. He came home about 
four o'clock this morning from trying to clear some 
of the tracks, and he was cold. As he entered the 
house, he threw off his wraps, and his wife said, 
' Come and go to bed.' He went to bed, and waking 
after two or three hours, put his hand over on his 
wife, to find her dead ! Her body is in the baggage 
car!" This was the man who had been so terribly 
smitten, who was yet submissive to God's will, who 
did not complain and did not charge God foolishly. 
Surely that man had a hidden treasure of hope and 
confidence worth more than all the wealth in the 
world. No wonder Paul calls that kind of peace 
" the peace of God, which passeth all understand- 
ing." 

And yet to many people this treasure is hidden. 
It is not only the heathen world, which has never 
heard about Jesus, to whom it is hidden ; but here in 
our own country, and in our own city, and to some 
who read this, Christ is a hidden treasure which they 
have not yet discovered. It is not that they have 



A MAN WHO FOUND A POT OF GOLD. 157 



not heard about him ; it is probable that they cannot 
remember the time when they first heard about Christ 
as the Saviour. Back in their childhood, among 
their first memories, are recollections of prayers and 
songs and books and papers that were full of teach- 
ing about Jesus. They have been taught in the 
Sunday-school and have heard sermons in the 
church, until they have perhaps been ready to say 
that they know as much about Christ as does any 
one; yet the truth is that Christ is as unknown to 
them as was that hidden treasure to the poor farmer 
until his plough turned up the gold before his eyes. 
For to know Christ only as a historical character, 
as one may know Napoleon or Washington or Gen- 
eral Grant, is not to know at all the deep, precious 
treasure that fills the heart with peace, banishes sin, 
and inspires to noble and holy deeds. 

Christ does not become the real treasure of your 
life until he becomes your personal Saviour in a sense 
as near and as certain as it would be if you were the 
only man living in the world for whom he died. 
When you come to really see Christ coming from 
heaven to be your Saviour, see him as he is hungry 
and misunderstood and beaten, and finally as he is 
nailed to the cross, and realize that it is for you; 
when you follow him to the grave, watch and wait 
with agony and suspense until the angel comes 
down from heaven on Easter morning, and the 
keepers fall like dead men when Christ comes out of 



158 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



the tomb in glorious victory, and realize that that 
means immortality for you; when you look up to 
heaven, as Stephen did, and see your Saviour sitting 
on the right hand of the Majesty on high, and real- 
ize that he is your High Priest, and that he " ever 
liveth to make intercession" for you, — only then do 
you perceive in the fullest sense how Christ has be- 
come your real treasure. Thus beholding him, 
your sins seem horrible to you, and you obey him 
and come and fall down on your knees before the 
mercy-seat, and cry out in repentance, and beg his 
forgiveness, and take him to be your Saviour and 
your Lord. And the Lord says to you, as he said 
to one whom he blessed while here in the flesh, "Ac- 
cording to your faith be it unto you," and all your 
sins are gone, and all your heart is filled with joy- 
It is this personal love of Christ which I offer you as 
the greatest treasure that you can have as a personal 
possession. 

Frank Weaver, an English evangelist, tells this 
very interesting story of a conversion: The story 
may be said to begin in South Africa, where, after 
the battle of Spion Kop, three British soldiers who 
were wounded in the battle lay in the hospital. Of 
the three, two were brothers and were Roman 
Catholics, and the third was a Protestant. One o£ 
the Romanists and the Protestant were dying o£ 
their wounds. The Romanist was telling his beads, 
and the Protestant asked the reason. 



A MAN WHO FOUND A POT OF GOLD. 



159 



" Because," was the reply, "lama good Cath- 
olic." 

" Indeed," said the Protestant soldier. " Well, 
I once heard Richard Weaver preach at Rotherhite, 
and he said that it is not being a Roman Catholic or 
a Protestant that saves us ; it is having ' Christ for 
me;' and for my part I can say it: ' It's Christ for 
me.'" 

Both men passed away. The third, the surviving 
Romanist, recovering, was sent home as an invalid, 
and in relating his war experiences to his family cir- 
cle at Deptford he told the story of this hospital inci- 
dent. A few weeks afterward two of his sisters, who 
were also Romanists, were passing along a street in 
the vicinity of their home, when they saw a placard 
announcing that the Weaver brothers, sons of Rich- 
ard Weaver, were to preach and sing that night at 
the East Greenwich Tabernacle. One of the young 
women was much impressed, and said, " These are 
the sons of the ' Christ for me' man. I'll go to hear 
them." 

She did so, and the Spirit of God carried the mes- 
sage straight to her heart. At the close of the ser- 
mon she went into the inquiry room, where she was 
pointed to the Saviour. Although she had been a 
member of the Roman Catholic Church all her life, 
the knowledge of having Christ as a personal treas- 
ure in her heart had been to her like the treasure 
hidden in the field; but in that inquiry room she 



i6o THE KING'S STEWARDS. 

caught a vision of him, and gave up all she had of 
earthly confidence and took this rich treasure as her 
all in all- As she left the tabernacle that evening, 
she joyfully said, " It's Christ for me." 

She now felt it her duty to tell the priest that she 
was no longer a Romanist. Accordingly she called 
on the priest, who was greatly concerned. 

" Why have you done this ?" he asked. 

" Because," she replied, " it's not being a Roman 
Catholic or a Protestant that saves us, but it is hav- 
ing 1 Christ for me.' " 

" You cannot prove that," rejoined the priest. 

" Perhaps I cannot," she said ; " but it's ' Christ 
for me.' " 

The young woman was employed in connection 
with the wardrobe or dressing department at one of 
the London theaters, and her forewoman was a 
Roman Catholic. The priest, being aware of this, 
instructed the forewoman to dismiss the convert im- 
mediately. He thought that would scare her into 
giving up her new faith. The sequel, however, did 
not satisfy his reverence. 

" I can do nothing with her," said the forewoman. 
" She says, ' It's Christ for me.' " 

" But you must stop her," urged the priest. 

" It's no use at all," was the reply. " I tell you, 
she says, ' It's Christ for me;' and as Christ is both 
your Master and mine, I can do no more." 

But the priest was more successful among her 



A MAN WHO FOUND A POT OF GOLD. 161 



own people, and succeeded in having her driven 
away from home. Yet in spite of all her sorrows 
and troubles she went on her way rejoicing, telling 
her friends, " It isn't being a Roman Catholic, or a 
Protestant; it's having ' Christ for me/ " 

It is a salvation like that I bring to you. I want 
you to have Christ personally as your own treasure, 
in which you can rejoice through all the troubles 
which may come to you in this world, and at last 
find in him a glorious immortality in the world be- 
yond. 



XVI. 



The Right Setting for Spiritual 
Diamonds. 

"Let not then your good be evil spoken of." — Romans 14: 
16. 

The theory of the text is that a splendid jewel re- 
quires an appropriate setting. A fine picture should 
have a good frame. A book of wisdom deserves to 
be handsomely bound. As one would not put a 
diamond in a setting of brass or iron, so goodness, 
which is the most splendid jewel of human charac- 
ter, ought not to have a setting that will cause it to 
be misjudged and slandered. Some one has well 
said that character is timeliness, a fine perception of 
what is becoming to the person, to the place, to the 
hour. If we do not attend to this our mirthfulness 
may be reckoned levity, our strictness intolerance, 
our liberality weakness, our large-mindedness li- 
cense. We have need to pray constantly that we 
may be " filled with the knowledge of his will in all 
wisdom;" so shall we serve the apples of gold in the 



RIGHT SETTING FOR SPIRITUAL DIAMONDS. 163 



basket of silver. We cannot afford to despise this 
matter. We cannot say, " Let us get the solid thing, 
and never mind the rest." A jeweller may work alto- 
gether with gold and gems ; but it is not enough to 
mix these indiscriminately. So we, as Christians, 
must be careful how we arrange our precious ma- 
terial, for of the virtues we may make either a loath- 
some eyesore or a charming picture. We must work 
with judgment, sympathy, courtesy, or our good 
will be evil spoken of. A man may be a lifetime 
building up a beautiful character and establishing a 
noble reputation before the world ; and yet, nothing 
is so easily tarnished or destroyed as a good reputa- 
tion. The act of a single moment may disfigure it 
and make it ugly. A breath of gossip or scandal 
may blast it, an indiscretion may tarnish it, a single 
hour's dozing and failure to be on the alert, watch- 
ful to do the right thing, at the right time, in the 
right way, may prove to be the " dead fly " in the 
ointment that may make it offensive. 

I do not wish to be misunderstood as confounding 
character and reputation. They do not mean the 
same thing. Character is what we are, and reputa- 
tion is what men think us to be. But it is very 
important that a good man, who has a good charac- 
ter, shall so live with reference to the rest of the 
world that his character shall have the proper rep- 
utation. We owe this to God and to our fellow 
men. Of course there are times when a man, in 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



order to keep his character, must give up his repu- 
tation. Then there should be no hesitation. In the 
long run, however, even in this world, a man's char- 
acter and his reputation will be the same. Yet it is 
possible for a man conscious of goodness and of 
righteous principles to be so careless of his presen- 
tation of himself to the world, that he makes his 
goodness unattractive and causes it to be spoken of 
in an evil way. I am sure this is a very important 
theme, and a very practical one, and I pray God we 
may find in it a message which may help us in our 
every-day life. 

There are a number of points illustrated in the 
New Testament teaching where this truth is brought 
out with great clearness. 

Take the question of personal freedom. That 
word freedom is a beautiful word in our language 
and in our history. It is one of our precious jewels. 
We count it as a diamond of the first water. And 
yet freedom may be harsh and cruel, and be exceed- 
ingly harmful in its results, unless it be exercised in 
the grace of brotherly sympathy. Brotherly sym- 
pathy is the setting for freedom. 

The text which we are studying just now came 
to be spoken on that account. Paul says : " I know, 
and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there 
is nothing unclean in itself : but to him that esteem- 
eth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean. But 
if thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkest 



RIGHT SETTING FOR SPIRITUAL DIAMONDS. 165 



thou not charitably. Destroy not him with thy meat 
for whom Christ died." 

This is the Christian spirit, that the strong must 
ever hold themselves as yoked together with the 
weak, over whom they have an influence. It is this 
reason that causes many a man of cool, quiet tem- 
perament, who feels that it would be safe for him to 
drink wine with moderation, to lay aside his freedom 
at this point, because his neighbor is like a magazine 
of gunpowder, to whom a glass of wine is the fuse 
that brings on a deadly explosion. 

General Nelson A. Miles, at the head of the 
American army, was asked one day why he did not 
take wine at public dinners. His answer was very 
quiet and simple : " I have a son who is a young man. 
If I drink he will drink also. Therefore I do not 
drink." There was a brave, strong man giving up 
his freedom through love, for fear that the use of his 
liberty might bring another into bondage. 

Faith is one of the three most enduring graces. 
And yet faith often seems cold and unlovable unless 
it be bathed in the warm glow of gratitude and 
thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is the only setting ap- 
propriate for faith. You may find a good illustra- 
tion of this in the case of the ten lepers who came to 
Christ for healing. He sent them all away with the 
same directions for their cleansing, and they were 
all recovered from their malady. " One of them, 
when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and 



166 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



with a loud voice glorified God; and fell down on 
his face at his feet, giving him thanks ; and he was a 
Samaritan. And Jesus answering said, Were there 
not ten cleansed? But where are the nine? There 
are not found that returned to give glory to God, 
save this stranger." 

Now these lepers were all good men up to a cer- 
tain point ; they all had faith, or else they would not 
have been healed. But only one had the beautiful 
grace of expressing his gratitude for the unspeak- 
able blessing he had received. I fear that there are 
many of us guilty at this point. We are guilty 
among our fellows. How easy it is to drink in kind 
words and kind deeds every day, and yet express 
no thanksgiving, no gratitude ; or, if we do, express 
it in so formal a way that it hurts more than it 
blesses. We all need to be on our guard at this 
point. Many persons, without intending it, come to 
be huge sponges that suck up all the blessing and 
helpfulness that they can get out of their homes 
and their places of business, but take it as a matter 
of course, and do not seem to understand that the 
very life-blood of men and women and children is 
being absorbed by them, and they go days and weeks 
without once saying " Thank you " in a way to 
make the heart beat quicker and to flood a 
weary heart with sunshine. The world of good 
people needs a baptism of gratitude more than any- 
thing else — a quick eye to appreciate kindness in an- 



RIGHT SETTING FOR SPIRITUAL DIAMONDS, 167 



other, an alert observation to see the loving purpose 
that failed, it may be, in the execution. We must 
not let men and women do things for us as a matter 
of course. There is no matter of course between im- 
mortal beings. Even though we pay men and 
women wages, we cannot buy souls. We cannot hire 
the personality of the sons of God. There is a divine 
glow, a halo that is a part of the reward of true ser- 
vice, and that is thanksgiving. And though a man 
get his wages, if he fail of this he is cheated. 

But this truth has a much wider range. No man 
can be ungrateful to his fellow men and be truly 
grateful to God. The man who takes things as a 
matter of course from his wife and children, his 
neighbors, or employes, will soon take things as a 
matter of course from God. Many a man's religious 
life dies out and loses all its sweetness and beauty, 
because he has lost that intense sense of personal 
gratitude which he owes to God. A German who 
had been converted told his neighbor one morning: 
" Everybody is rejoicing at our house. My wife is 
rejoicing, I am rejoicing, my Saviour is rejoicing. 
Last night I went in to kiss my little children good 
night. As I was standing there, my wife said to me, 
' Dear husband, you love these our children very 
dearly, but it is not a thousandth part as much as the 
blessed Saviour loves us/ " Brother, how much do 
you owe to God for the infinite love that sought you 
out as a sinner and healed you of your sins ? What 



i68 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



are you doing to let all the world know your grati- 
tude and thanksgiving to him for his great mercy ? 

Mercy, although it is one of the divinest emotions 
or deeds, will fail of its sweetest mission unless exer- 
cised with cheerfulness. Paul expresses this well 
when he says : " He that showeth mercy, let him do 
it with cheerfulness." I think people sin at this point 
perhaps more frequently than at almost any other. 
It is possible to do a kind deed in such a way that 
the person who has received the favor will never 
think of it again without doubling up the fist or 
gritting the teeth. It is possible to rob the good 
deed of all its divine beauty and make it a hateful 
thing, when it ought to be as lovely as an angel's 
visit. 

A young fellow just out of college tells the story 
of two women, each the wife of a professor in the 
college he attended. Both of these women threw 
open their homes in a generous way and sought to 
be helpful to the students who were away from 
home. One family was rich, and the other was in 
very moderate circumstances. The rich woman 
gave very elaborate entertainments, and the ma- 
terial blessings received there far surpassed any- 
thing that was ever found in the other house. But 
elaborate as these entertainments were, the lady gave 
them in a cold and formal way, and seemed to feel 
that she was doing a great thing and taking on her- 
self heavy burdens for the sake of the young men. 



RIGHT SETTING FOR SPIRITUAL DIAMONDS. 169 



At the other house everything was different. 
Everything was informal and simple; there was no 
attempt at display, and no extravagant or expensive 
viands. But the young men never went there with- 
out finding the cheerful face of a sympathetic, kindly 
woman, who made them feel that nothing gave her 
more happiness and delight than to charm away 
their lonesomeness and strengthen them for their 
work. And so it was the woman without money, 
and without the material assistance which money 
could bring, who was the idol of that college. Both 
women were doing a merciful deed, but the one gave 
her deed the setting of cheerfulness. 

A lady in a hurry, walking down the street, ran 
against a little boy, and almost knocked him down. 
She stopped, really anxious, and begged his pardon. 
She was a beautiful woman, with a face full of kind- 
ness, and as she smiled down on the little fellow 
carried out of himself and forgetting his timidity in 
the charm of her eyes, he exclaimed, " You may 
knock me down again if you'll smile on me like 
that." She could not have had a better compliment. 
Her apology had the true setting that made it heal 
all hurts. Let us take the message home to our own 
hearts. In the give and take of life every day, in the 
home, in the street, in the store, in society, in the 
church, we are always running against one another, 
and we have to be merciful to one another — and we 



170 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



are, in a way. But, dear friends, let us do it in the 
right way. Show your mercy with cheerfulness. 

Rightful authority may be robbed of all that sug- 
gests simply brutal force by true Christian courtesy. 
The only place in the Bible where that word " cour- 
teous " is used (though the adverb is used in two 
other places), is by Peter, in talking about the au- 
thority in family and household government, and 
there he urges that those who are in such authority 
" be courteous." The word courteous is derived 
from the term " court," and is used in its primitive 
sense to describe that refinement of manners which 
ought to prevail in the palaces of princes and distin- 
guish the intercourse of the great. Christian 
courtesy is based on the idea of benevolence or good- 
will toward men ; a desire to promote the happiness 
of others. Some one calls courtesy " benevolence in 
trifles." Surely, whatever you may call it, it has the 
power to sweeten human life, and nowhere more 
than in the home. I fear many of us are sinners 
there in the matter of true and genuine Christian 
courtesy. Men should be courteous to their wives, 
and wives should be courteous to their husbands. 
Parents should be courteous to their children, and 
children should be trained to show courtesy to each 
other. The employer who is courteous toward his 
employes gains a real power which no fear can ever 
give him. 

When the Duke of Wellington was ill unto death, 



RIGHT SETTING FOR SPIRITUAL DIAMONDS. 171 



the last thing he took was a little tea. On his ser- 
vant's handing it to him in a saucer, and asking him 
if he would have it, the duke replied, " Yes, if you 
please." These were his last words. How much 
true courtesy is expressed by them! He who had 
commanded the greatest armies in Europe did not 
forget the small courtesies of life. True courtesy is 
Christianity's halo thrown over the rugged skeleton 
of power. 

Truth may become so warped as to be practically 
falsehood unless spoken in the spirit of love. Paul 
declared that we ought to speak the truth in love. 
We would never find a better illustration of this than 
in the tender grace with which Jesus opened the 
wounded heart of the wicked woman of Samaria in 
order that he might save her soul. That ought to be 
a lesson to us. If you have a delicate and sad truth 
to speak, do not go blurting it out so that it will hurt 
as though a rock had come crashing through the 
window, and cut a gash in your forehead and hurled 
you to the ground, but study out the kindest and 
most loving way in which you may speak that truth, 
so that it may heal while it wounds. Christ 
wounded that Samaritan woman to the very heart, 
but his love healed her and left her pure and happy. 
God help us to imitate our Lord! Never speak an 
unwelcome truth to any one unless you do it lov- 
ingly. It is not always necessary to speak. There 
are some truths that it is not our business to speak. 



172 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



Sometimes the most loving thing we can do is to 
keep our mouths shut and be silent. But if it is our 
duty to speak a truth which we know will hurt, 
never allow any enmity or jealousy or anger to be 
mixed up with such speech. This would give it a 
false setting. Truth is a diamond for which only 
love can be the setting. Speak the truth in love or 
else be silent. Many parents would keep control of 
their children, and be able to lead them to the mercy 
seat and up to heaven at last, if they would only 
make sure never to speak an unpleasant truth except 
when love has complete control. 

I am sure we must feel after this study that God is 
ever seeking to make well-rounded, charming Chris- 
tian men and women out of us. How beautiful is 
Peter's estimate of the growing splendor of a true 
Christian life : "Add to your faith virtue, and to vir- 
tue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, and to 
temperance patience, and to patience godliness, and 
to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly 
kindness charity," i.e., love. 



XVII. 



A Soul Among Lions — A Study 
of Browning's "Saul." 

" My soul is among lions." — Psalm 57 : 4. 

One of Shakespeare's characters, describing the 
reckless attack of certain desperadoes, says they 

" like lions wanting food, 
Do rush upon us as their hungry prey." 

David says that he found the temptations and trials 
of life to be of that sort. He was reverent toward 
God, and was seeking to do the will of God ; but that 
did not save him from the lionlike assaults of his 
enemies. Let no one imagine that goodness is a 
guarantee against the trials and temptations of this 
world. Christ was tempted and tried. He spent 
forty days in the wilderness with the wild beasts. 
Satan assailed him as a roaring lion, seeking to 
devour him, and we must not expect to be greater 
than our Lord. The greatest and noblest men and 
women that have ever lived have endured great 
trials, and have indeed grown great through their 
trials. 



174 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



Some one, quoting a remark of Bishop Andrews, 
made in a recent sermon, that " The man who has 
the Pauline spirit will have the Pauline success," 
says that it sounds well. It looks v/ell in print, and 
by many will be assented to without a question. 
But what was " Pauline success " ? Crowded 
churches? Wonderful revivals? A mighty, tri- 
umphant ministry? Paul, indeed, did have great 
revivals, and won large numbers of men to become 
Christians. But let us not forget that he won a 
good many other things which it would test our 
pluck to carry off with us. He won five floggings 
at the public whipping-post. He won a beating on 
a number of occasions. He won being stoned until 
he was left unconscious. He won imprisonment 
and desertion and slander. And, finally, to cap it 
all, he won a chance to lay his head over an execu- 
tioner's block and have it severed from his body. 
Paul won great glory and a great crown which will 
be a joy in heaven forever, but he knew what David 
meant when he said, " My soul is among lions." 

Now we all know what it means to be beset by 
difficulties and temptations and sorrows, until it 
seems to us that we are in a very lions' den. It is 
not to harrow your feelings by recounting the deep 
sorrows and trials of life that I have recalled this 
theme, but rather to point the way out of the lions' 
den. For if you will read all this Psalm, you will find 



A SOUL AMONG LIONS. 



175 



that though David starts out in the depths of gloom, 
and seems to be lying on red-hot fagots, with roar- 
ing lions crouching to spring upon him with hungry 
teeth and sharp claws, yet in the very act of pouring 
out his soul to God the consciousness of God re- 
lieves him, and he closes his Psalm with an anthem 
of thanksgiving. The lions are still there; the nets 
still wait in the path to entrap his feet; the gaping 
pit is still open ; wicked men whose teeth are spears 
and arrows, and slanderers whose tongues are like 
sharp swords, still dog his footsteps. But he rises 
above it all, in the consciousness that God is above 
all and over all, and that so long as his heart is fixed 
on God no real harm can come to< him. 

I have recently been re-studying one of the 
strongest pictures in human literature, dealing with 
this problem of how the human soul shall get out of 
its den of lions. I mean Robert Browning's 
" Saul." Many of you have read it, and it will re- 
pay all of you to read it many times. Saul is among 
lions ; he is in the depths of despair, and fearing for 
his very life his officers have sent for David, the 
young shepherd poet, the young man with the harp 
and with a soul of music, and the chief officer meets 
him on his approach with rapturous welcome. 

" Said Abner, ' At last thou art come ! ere I tell, ere thou 
speak, 

Kiss my cheek, wish me well !' Then I wished it, and did 
kiss his cheek. 



1 7 6 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



And he : ' Since the king, O my friend, for thy countenance 
sent, 

Neither drunken nor eaten have we ; nor until from his tent 
Thou return with the joyful assurance the king liveth yet, 
Shall our lip with the honey be bright, with the water be wet. 
For out of the black mid-tent's silence, a space of three days, 
Not a sound hath escaped to thy servant, of prayer nor of 
praise, 

To betoken that Saul and the Spirit have ended their strife, 
And that faint in his triumph the monarch sinks back upon 
life. 

Yet now my heart leaps, O beloved ! God's child ! with his 

dew 

On thy gracious gold hair, and those lilies still living and 
blue 

Just broken to twine round thy harp-strings, as if no wild 
heat 

Were now raging to torture the desert !' " 

Then David knelt down to the God of his fathers 
and humbly prayed for help. The prayer ended, 
he ran to the tent-door of the king, and went in on 
his message of mercy and helpfulness. He began to 
sing of the beautiful in nature and in life. He 
played the melodies of the hills and fields and 
herds, that were so dear to that shepherd nation. 
Says David: 

" Then I tuned my harp — took off the lilies we twine round its 

chords 

Lest they snap 'neath the stress of the noontide — those sun- 
beams like swords ! 

And I first played the tune all our sheep know, as, one after 
one, 

So docile they come to the pen-door till folding be done. 



A SOUL AMONG LIONS. 



1/7 



They are white and untorn by the bushes, for lo, they have 
fed 

Where the long grasses stifle the water within the stream's 
bed; 

And now one after one seeks its lodging, as star follows star 
Into eve and the blue far above us — so blue and so far !" 

Saul listened in silence that was stark, blind, and 
dumb. The music, sweet though it was, did not 
reach the depths of agony in the soul of the tempted 
and troubled man. David changes the tune : 

" Then the tune for which the quails on the corn-land will 
each leave his mate 
To fly after the player ; then, what makes the crickets elate 
Till for boldness they fight one another ; and then, what has 
weight 

To set the quick jerboa a-musing outside his sand house." 

But the music which charmed the birds, and told 
of the life of all the gay creatures of nature, had no 
charm for the haunted soul of the king. Then 
David turned to the life of man, and sought to win 
the king by the varied experiences of his fellow men. 

" Then I played the help-tune of our reapers, their wine-song, 
when hand 

Grasps at hand, eye lights eye in good friendship, and great 
hearts expand, 

And grow one in the sense of this world's life. And then, 
the last song 

When the dead man is praised on his journey — ' Bear, bear 
him along, 

With his few faults shut up like dead flowerets ! Are balm 
seeds not here 



178 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



To console us? The land has none left such as he on the 
bier. 

Oh, would we might keep thee, my brother !' And then, the 
glad chant 

Of the marriage, — first go the young maidens, next, she 

whom we vaunt 
As the beauty, the pride of our dwelling. — And then, the 

great march 

Wherein man runs to man to assist him and buttress an 
arch 

Naught can break ; who shall harm them, our friends ! 

Then, the chorus intoned 
As the Levites go up to the altar in glory enthroned. 
But I stopped here : for here in the darkness Saul groaned." 

Neither the song of the woods, of the reapers, the 
funeral hymn, the wedding song, nor the chant of 
the Levites at worship could rouse Saul. Neither 
the beauty nor the interest of human life could help 
the poor king, weighed down and depressed in the 
depth of life's melancholy. 

Again David changes the music. This time he 
sings of the pleasure of manly strife and success. 
He sings of the joy there is in work accomplished 
and in glory achieved. With enthusiasm he bursts 
forth : 

"Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up to 
rock, 

The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool 
silver shock 

Of the plunge in a pool's living water, the hunt of the bear, 
And the sultriness showing the lion is couched in his lair. 
And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with gold dust 
divine, 



A SOUL AMONG LIONS. 



179 



And the locust-flesh steeped in the pitcher, the full draught 
of wine, 

And the sleep in the dried river-channel where bulrushes tell 
That the water was wont to go warbling so softly and well. 
How good is man's life, the mere living ! How fit to employ 
All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy! 
Hast thou loved the white locks of thy father, whose sword 

thou didst guard 
When he trusted thee forth with the armies, for glorious 

reward ? 

******* 

:< And the friends of thy boyhood — that boyhood of wonder 
and hope, 

Present promise and wealth of the future beyond the eye's 
scope — 

Till lo, thou art grown to a monarch ; a people is thine : 
And all gifts, which the world offers singly, on one head 
combine !" 

And yet with all this David fails to comfort the 
king. So he nerves himself for a still higher 
flight of song, and sings to him of the glory of 
fame. He tells the king that his name shall live 
forever in the history of the country ; he shall have 
a splendid tomb, and the great shaft that rises above 
it shall be graven with mighty deeds, and he shall be 
loved and reverenced forever. He calls upon Saul 
to take a long draught of soul-wine and 

" Look forth o'er the years ! 
Thou hast done now with eyes for the actual ; begin with 
the seer's ! 

Is Saul dead? in the depths of the vale make his tomb — bid 
arise 



i8o THE KING'S STEWARDS. 

A gray mountain of marble heaped four-square till, built to 

the skies, 

Let it mark where the great First King slumbers ; whose 

fame would ye know ? 
Up above see the rock's naked face, where the record shall go 
In great characters cut by the scribe. Such was Saul, so he 

did; 

With the sages directing the work, by the populace chid — 
For not half, they'll affirm, is comprised there ! Which fault 
to amend, 

In the grove with his kind grows the cedar, whereon they 
shall spend 

(See, in tablets 'tis level before them) their praise, and 
record 

With the gold of the graver, Saul's story, — the statesman's 
great word 

Side by side with the poet's sweet comment. The river's 
a-wave 

With smooth paper-reeds grazing each other when prophet- 
winds rave : 

So the pen gives unborn generations their due and their 
part 

In thy being! Then, first of the mighty, thank God that 
thou art !" 

Even this great appeal to Saul's ambition and love 
of fame and power does not rouse the king from 
that deep den of misery in which his lions are tor- 
menting him. Then David is illuminated in mind 
and heart with a new truth. He sings of a new life, 
a life renewed, a life seized hold upon by divine 
power and lifted up out of the mire of sin and doubt, 
and given a glory hitherto unknown. And now he 
sings to Saul of the God who will 



A SOUL AMONG LIONS. 181 

" Interpose at the difficult minute, snatch Saul — the mistake 
Saul the failure, the ruin he seems now — and bid him awake 
From the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find himself 
set 

Clear and safe in new light and new life — a new harmony yet 
To be run and continued and ended — who knows? — or 
endure ! 

The man taught enough by life's dream, of the rest to make 
sure; 

By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning intensified bliss 
And the next world's reward and repose by the struggles in 
this." 

And thus it was that David lifted Saul out of his 
den of lions. It is the music of the new life, the spir- 
itual life, the immortal life, the consciousness that 
the battle with lions here has something to do with 
fitting us for the flight with angels yonder, that can 
nerve us and make us strong to endure, and cause 
us to rejoice with David in the midst of life's sor- 
rows and persecutions. No man, no woman, can 
keep a brave and cheerful heart amidst the roaring 
lions of earth, unless the sky above has flashing into 
it the sunshine of eternity. All the beauty of nature, 
all the exultation and pleasure of living, all the more 
intoxicating joys and achievements of ambition, all 
the glory of fame and power — these are not enough 
to give a man triumph over the lions of sorrow, 
temptation and disappointment that beset him in this 
world. We must have the conviction that this life 
is only the prelude to another life, only the vestibule 
to a more glorious career. Christ came to make us 



182 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



sure of that life ; he came that we might have life, and 
that we might have it more abundantly. Browning's 
great faith, that made it possible for him to sing 
this song of " Saul," is a faith in Jesus Christ. The 
difficulties and troubles of life, the shadows of death, 
the mysteries of the future, were all aglow with a 
wonderful brightness to the great poet, because he 
saw them all in the " Light of the knowledge of the 
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." Christ 
revealed to him a God willing to suffer for his chil- 
dren if he might save them. Listen to David's 
nobler song: 

"Would I suffer for him that I love? so wouldst thou — so 
wilt thou ! 

So shall crown thee the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost 
crown — 

As thy love is discovered almighty, almighty be proved 
One spot for the creature to stand in ! It is by no breath, 
Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins issue with 
death ! 

As thy love is discovered almighty, almighty be proved 
Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being beloved ! 
He who did most shall bear most; the strongest shall stand 
the most weak. 

Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for! my flesh that 
I seek 

In the Godhead ! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be 
A Face like my face that receives thee ; a Man like to me, 
Thou shalt love and be loved by forever : a Hand like this 
hand 

Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the 
Christ stand!" 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



183 



This, then, is my message: that the only way to 
live cheerfully and triumphantly in this life of temp- 
tation and trial is to live conscious of the nearness of 
God in Christ Jesus. The saintly McCheyne was 
accustomed to say to his people, "For every look 
you give within at yourself, give ten looks without 
at Jesus Christ." 

A man who was for a long time shut up in Libby 
Prison says that they used to console themselves by 
frequently singing the doxology, " Praise God from 
whom all blessings flow." Day after day they saw 
comrades passing away, and their numbers increas- 
ing by fresh living recruits for the grave. One 
night, about 10 o'clock, through the stillness and 
the darkness they heard the tramp of coming feet 
that soon stopped before the prison door until ar- 
rangements could be made inside. In the company 
was a young Baptist minister, whose heart almost 
fainted as he looked on those cold walls and thought 
of the suffering inside. Tired and weary, he sat 
down, put his face in his hands and wept. Just then 
a lone voice of deep, sweet pathos sung out from an 
upper window, 

" Praise God, from whom all blessings flow," 
and a dozen manly voices joined in the second line, 

" Praise him, all creatures here below ;" 
then by the time the third was reached more than a 



i8 4 THE KING'S STEWARDS. 

score of hearts were full, and joined to send the 
words on high, 

" Praise him above, ye heavenly host;" 

by this time the prison was all alive and seemed to 
quiver with the sacred song, as from every room and 
cell those brave men sang, 

" Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!" 

As the song died out on the still night that enveloped 
in darkness the doomed city of Richmond, the young 
man arose and happily began himself to sing : 

" Prisons would palaces prove, 

If Jesus would dwell with me there." 



XVIII. 

The Special Phases of Christianity 
Demanded by the New Century. 

" The first face was the face of a cherub, and the second 
face was the face of a man, and the third the face of a lion, 
and the fourth the face of an eagle." — Ezekiel 10: 14. 

Out of all this wonderful vision of wheels and 
cherubim, of wings and living creatures, I seize upon 
a single illustration to suggest my theme. All the 
vision resolves itself into one picture for our purpose. 
For us there is one great wheel, the wheel of advanc- 
ing civilization, always turning, forever and forever 
in a whirl. In the midst of this there is a living 
creature, the Christian religion, which is seeking to 
master and control the civilization of the world. 
And this living creature, Christianity, has four faces. 
I see in them the four special phases of Christianity 
which the world needs in this new century upon 
which we are entering. 

If we are to follow the faces in their order, we 
must first note that there is great need in our time 
for a thoughtful Christianity. I follow John Mil- 
ton's lead, and interpret the face of the cherub to 



i86 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



mean the face of thoughtfulness or contemplation. 
In his poem, " II Penseroso," he sings : 

" But first and chiefest, with thee bring 
Him that yon soars on golden wing, 
Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne, 
The cherub Contemplation." 

There is great need to-day to lay emphasis on a 
religion that has a deep current. The two extremes 
where we are most in danger in our religious life are 
a religion which is only theoretical, in which the 
head only is concerned, and on the other hand a 
religion that is entirely emotional, which depends 
and lives upon the feelings. Both are dangerous. 
No religion of the head, simply, can ever master and 
enrich a human life. The real power of control is in 
the heart rather than in the head. And yet a religion 
that is only emotional, that has no intelligent consid- 
eration to sustain it, is likely to be merely temporary. 
What we need is a religion which conquers not only 
the head but the heart. Paul was a great example 
of the powerful and victorious Christian for all ages. 
A man with a clear head, who was always ready to 
give a reason for the hope that was in him, and yet 
a man of large heart, of generous sympathies, who 
could pour out his soul to a runaway slave, or lie 
on his back and sing psalms and shout glory at mid- 
night in a dungeon. In Paul we see a marvelous 
illustration of a man whose Christianity ran in a 



THE SPECIAL PHASES OF CHRISTIANITY. 187 



deep, strong, full current of divine life. His thought, 
his feeling, every stream of life, joined in the 
one great current of his Christian career. We need 
such Christians in the world to-day. The Christian- 
ity that is only intellectual will gain no real power 
over the masses of men. We must have a religion 
where the head joins with the heart in seeking to 
conquer the world for Christ. Modern Christianity 
must recall some things, I am sure, before we can 
have the spiritual contemplation which we need. We 
must have our secret prayer as the fathers did ; there 
must be a family altar in every Christian home ; the 
emphasis must be laid upon religion in the home and 
on the cultivation of deep and earnest personal piety. 
The fires of Christianity will burn anew when we can 
say like David, " While I was musing the fire 
burned." There are deep visions of spiritual things 
that can only come to the heart which muses and 
meditates. 

Frances Ridley Havergal, when somebody asked 
her who our own Fanny Crosby was, replied, " She 
is a blind lady whose heart can see splendidly in the 
sunshine of God's love." And in her song which 
she sent to Miss Crosby she brings out the thought 
very clearly : 

" Oh, her heart can see, her heart can see ! 
And its sight is strong and swift and free. 
Never the ken of mortal eye 
Could pierce so deep and far and high 



i88 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



As the eagle vision of hearts that dwell 
In the lofty, sunlit citadel 
Of faith that overcomes the world, 
With banners of hope and joy unfurled, 
Garrisoned with God's perfect peace, 
Ringing with paeans that never cease, 
Flooded with splendor bright and broad, 
The glorious light of the love of God. 

" Her heart can see, her heart can see ! 
Well may she sing so joyously! 
For the King himself, in his tender grace, 
Hath shown her the brightness of his face : 
And who shall pine for a glow-worm light 
When the sun goes forth in his radiant might? 
She can read his law, as a shining chart, 
For his finger hath written it on her heart ; 
She can read his love, for on all her way 
His hand is writing it every day. 
' Bright cloud' indeed must that darkness be 
Where ' Jesus only' the heart can see. 

" Her heart can see ! Her heart can see, 
Beyond the glooms and the mystery, 
Glimpses of glory not far away, 
Nearing and brightening day by day ; 
Golden crystal and emerald bow, 
Lustre of pearl and sapphire glow, 
Sparkling river and healing tree, 
Evergreen palms of victory, 
Harp and crown and raiment white, 
Holy and beautiful dwellers in light; 
A throne, and One thereon, whose face 
Is the glory of that wondrous place." 

The second face is " the face of a man," which 
may suggest to us that the Christianity of our time 



THE SPECIAL PHASES OF CHRISTIANITY. 189 



needs to be intensely human, and to make much of 
the brotherhood of man. Nothing human must be 
uninteresting to modern Christianity. No man must 
be so high or rich or powerful that we shall not 
measure him by, and demand from him obedience to, 
the standards of righteousness set up by Jesus 
Christ. No man has sunk so low into poverty and 
sin and misery, no man is locked in dungeon cell so 
dark, but we must follow him with the sympathy 
and the divine compassion of Jesus Christ our Lord. 
We must hold out to him the same hope that Christ 
offered to lost men and women in his own time. We 
must see the possible brother and sister of Jesus 
Christ in every man and woman we meet. However 
long they may have sinned against God's mercy, and 
however disappointing they may be, we must rec- 
ognize the fact that they are our brothers and 
sisters; that Jesus Christ is as much interested 
in them as he is in us ; and that it is not only the su- 
preme duty, but the supreme privilege of our lives, 
to make Christian brotherhood real to the people 
who need it most. 

Modern Christianity must accept the fact that we 
are peculiarly our brother's keepers. We must not 
shirk our opportunity to protect the poor and hold 
out a guiding hand to the weak, by turning over the 
great forces of government to corrupt and wicked 
hands. W e must realize more clearly that impure 
water, careless or corrupt food inspection, improper 



i go 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



sanitary conditions, a careless or a criminal police, 
unjust taxation, all press most sorely on the backs 
of the poor and the weak, who are the peculiar wards 
— nay, use a kindlier word, the younger brothers 
and sisters — of modern Christianity. The church of 
Jesus Christ must have a sympathetic ear for every 
cry that comes from the tenement house, for every 
cry from the weak, the sick, and the overburdened 
of every kind. We must not, we dare not, have ears 
that are only ready to listen to the rich and the 
strong, while the toiling masses cry out in vain for a 
hearing. Christianity is not to be partisan, but it is 
to be brotherly. The rich man and the poor man are 
our brothers, and we must deal as justly and sympa- 
thetically with the one as with the other. We must 
bring each of them, into the fellowship of our great 
Elder Brother, Jesus Christ. I am sure that what is 
needed to-day to catch the ear of the world and at- 
tract the eye of humanity is to make our modern 
Christianity intensely human, stretching out a broth- 
er's warm hand, speaking the word of comfort and 
of fellowship, breaking down caste and class, and 
bringing Christ in our own selves into close, hand-to- 
hand, elbow-to-elbow, face-to-face, heart-to-heart, 
human fellowship. 

Then there is "the face of the lion." That can 
only mean that our Christianity must have the cour- 
age of its convictions. The church has never made 
anything by pulling down her standards of right- 



THE SPECIAL PHASES OF CHRISTIANITY. 191 

eousness. A superficial Christianity, which makes 
no claims and no demands upon human life that are 
higher than those of the world, will have no influ- 
ence, and nobody will respect it. If we are to 
have a mighty influence on this generation, 
which will help to destroy the works of the 
devil and set up the kingdom of God with its 
peace and good will to all men, we must have the 
face of a lion. Christianity must drop the tone 
of apology for its existence. Man belongs to 
God, not to the devil. Christianity is not an inter- 
loper trying to proselyte a man away from what is 
the natural and normal course of his life. Holiness 
is the natural atmosphere for the human heart. No 
man will ever have perfect peace and contentment of 
soul, no man will ever rise up to do the noblest deeds 
that are possible to him, until he breathes that at- 
mosphere. Sin is an invader, and all the wicked- 
ness there is in the world is an invasion of the evil 
one. Christianity must stand on its rights. Every 
human soul belongs to God. Every man and woman 
in the world has been ransomed and redeemed 
by the precious blood of Jesus Christ. The saloon, 
the brothel, the gambling hell, and all these royster- 
ing camps of the devil are invasions in God's world. 

The church of Jesus Christ stands in the modern 
city as the righteous fortress of the Most High. We 
are here not to stand on the defense, not to sit down 
behind the walls that our fathers built and sing 



ig2 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



" Hold the fort/' but to be an aggressive army of 
conquest. We must make war, stern and hot, upon 
everything which lays a polluting and destroying 
hand upon the sons and daughters of God. The 
church must make no peace with the hosts of the 
devil. There must be no truce between us and the 
liquor traffic. Modern Christianity must patch up 
no compromises and carry no white flags of truce in 
dealing with the institutions that prey upon the bod- 
ies and the souls of men and women. We must 
share the fate of Jesus Christ in the world. We 
must tell the truth about Jesus. We must live the 
truth about Jesus; and if that is unpopular, then 
with the lion-face we must endure unpopularity un- 
til in the strength of God we conquer. Better a 
thousand times to be temporarily defeated as a lion, 
honestly and bravely standing for righteousness, 
than to be fed like a jackal on the miserable refuse 
flung to cowards that desert their Lord. A brave 
Christianity, with the kind of courage that has been 
illustrated in every triumphant day of the faith, 
would conquer the modern world for our Divine 
Lord, and lift cruel burdens from the shoulders of 
suffering men and women. 

And then there is " the face of the eagle," which 
must suggest to us the upward look, and the hope 
which dares to believe that everything good enough 
to be true in God's world can be true to the children 
of God. Humanity must go onward. " In we are, 



THE SPECIAL PHASES OF CHRISTIANITY. 193 



and on we must." We must not gauge what we are 
to do for Christ in the future by what we have done 
in the past. There are better days to come. Like the 
eagle, we are to soar above the mountains, to shout 
exultingly in the face of the sky, to bathe ourselves 
in the warm sunlight of the glorious upper air. We 
must not think for a moment that because a vicious 
and evil institution is old and gray with antiquity, 
therefore it is forever to thwart God's purpose 
and block the wheels of righteousness. No, indeed ; 
we must have the face of the eagle, must realize that 
we live in an age of wonders and of miracle-work. 
This is not the age of the ox-team or of the canvas- 
backed prairie schooner, when news goes by four- 
horse stage or sailing vessels. This is the age of 
the palace-car and the lightning express train, the 
age of the telephone and the cable and the steam 
ferry, the age of the automobile and the X-rays. It 
must not be expected that moral movements are to 
crawl with snail-like sluggishness in such an atmos- 
phere as we are breathing to-day. It is a time when 
every good thing is possible, a time when no wrong 
can hide in the dark very long, a time when the elec- 
tric light of investigation and research is hunting out 
the hidden things of darkness, making it possible 
for wrongs to be righted and iniquity to be destroyed 
with a swiftness that was never possible before. 

Let us thank God and take courage. Every in- 
vention, every gain in power to use the natural 



i 9 4 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



world, helps on the mission of Jesus Christ. Christ's 
mission is the salvation of men and women in body 
and mind and heart, in home and business and gov- 
ernment. Everything which quickens the possibil- 
ity of every man's knowing every other man's need, 
which lengthens the arm of the strong to reach afar 
to bring help and protection to the weak, is opening 
the path for Christ and hastening his divine victory 
among men. The railroad, the telephone, the cable, 
the newspaper — all of these are helpers of the divine 
evangel, in that they make it impossible for wicked- 
ness to hide, or for any man long to suffer unheeded 
by the Christian heart of the world. Let us, there- 
fore, with a devotion thoughtful and earnest, go 
forth in fellowship with Jesus Christ to minister to 
all human needs. With lion-like courage and eagle- 
eyed hope let us battle and conquer in the name of 
our Lord. 



XIX. 

A Society Tragedy. 

" And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came ; and 
they that were ready went in with him to the marriage ; and 
the door was shut. Afterward came also the other virgins, 
saying, Lord, Lord, open to us. But he answered and said, 
Verily I say unto you, I know you not." — Matthew 25: 10-12. 

This is a story of social life long ago. It is 
romantic enough. It is a wedding night in a large 
social circle. The marriage ceremony has been per- 
formed. The bride and bridegroom are now about 
to proceed to their own house. In that old time, be- 
fore street lamps were known, a night wedding 
meant a torchlight procession through the streets, 
and a most picturesque and interesting scene. One 
company of five girls has accompanied the bride 
as she has gone forth from her childhood's home, 
and now as they turn their faces toward the home 
of the bridegroom, five other girls wait to welcome 
them. As often happens nowadays, the ceremony is 
delayed; some of the guests, perhaps coming from 
another town, are late in arriving, and one thing and 
another interferes, until the girls, watching with their 



i 9 6 THE KING'S STEWARDS. 

lamps to go out to meet the bridegroom and welcome 
the wedding party to the new home, become tired 
and fall asleep. It was well-nigh midnight when 
at last the flaring torches preceded the happy party 
down the street, and the cry rang out, arousing the 
sleeping girls, " Behold, the bridegroom cometh ; go 
ye out to meet him!" Every girl was on her feet 
in a moment; sleep vanished like magic, and each 
one turned to her lamp to see that it was well 
trimmed and the flame bright for the welcome. Then 
for the first time five of them discovered that in the 
multitude of other affairs during the day they had 
entirely forgotten to see to it that their lamps were 
well filled with oil. And now they have gone out ! 
What can they do? Each girl turns to her neigh- 
bor whose lamp is burning and says, " Let me have 
some of your oil. Mine has gone out. I forgot 
to fill it." But the girls with the burning lamps, 
who have been careful and prudent, now hold up 
their vessels and show that they only have oil enough 
for themselves, and that if they should undertake 
to divide it none of the lamps would burn. And so, 
leaving the five wise virgins with their lamps 
trimmed and ablaze, ready to go forth when the 
procession arrives, the five foolish, careless girls turn 
and run down the street, hunting for a shop that is 
still open, that they may get oil. But every shop is 
closed. At last they pound on the door until they 
awaken a grumbling man, and they buy a little oil 



A SOCIETY TRAGEDY. 



197 



for their lamps. Then they come back and knock 
at the bridegroom's door, but it is now closed. 
When there is no answer, they shout aloud, say- 
ing, " Lord, Lord, open to us." But the bridegroom 
feels that they have treated him and his wedding 
with great discourtesy and disrespect, and that their 
neglect reveals an absence of regard and care for his 
feelings ; so now he refuses to recognize them as his 
guests, and replies, " I know you not." 

Christ applies this story directly to himself, and 
urges his disciples to live daily in an alert attitude, 
always with their lamps trimmed and burning, like 
unto those who watch for their Lord. No man can 
tell when this life of probation on earth will come to 
an end, and it is of infinite importance to us that we 
leave nothing undone which we feel must be done 
before we die. We must ever live so that if Christ 
calls us we shall be ready. Jesus says, " Watch 
therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour 
wherein the Son of Man cometh." 

Here is a solemn question for us : Are you ready 
to meet Christ in judgment if he calls you to-day? 
That is a perfectly pertinent and wise question. It is 
something that is liable to happen to-night, or at any 
time, and we are never safe to go for an hour, or a 
moment, without that readiness. We are ready if 
we have received the forgiveness of our sins through 
obedience to Christ, and are living in harmony and 
peace with him. Is this true of you ? 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



A little English girl was asked by a lady what kind 
of a man a certain relative of hers was, who had be- 
friended her in great need, and was finally asked if 
he were a Christian. To this the little girl responded 
with enthusiasm, " Yes, ma'am, he is a converted 
Christian, that's what he is." That little girl, small 
as she was, had somehow got it into her head that 
one might be a mere formal, theoretical Christian 
without being really converted. But we are not 
ready to meet Christ in judgment unless we have 
been converted. Jesus himself has said, " Except 
ye be converted and become as little children, ye 
shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." How 
is it with you? Is your life so intensely Christian 
that if those who know you were asked whether you 
were a Christian or not, they would speak out with 
the enthusiasm and confidence of this little girl, 
" Yes, he is a converted Christian, that he is." 

But some of you have not yet confessed Christ at 
all. Here is your message. If those who have 
started on the way, but have not yet become rich in 
Christian experience, have not come into that fel- 
lowship with Jesus Christ which feeds each day's 
life with heavenly oil as the reservoir of a lamp feeds 
the burning wick, if it is necessary to appeal to them 
to make sure of their readiness to meet Christ, how 
important that I should remind you that you are 
without God and without hope in the world. How 
utterly without excuse you would be if Christ should 



A SOCIETY TRAGEDY. 



199 



come and call you, and find that you had made no 
preparation whatever to meet him in peace. 

There is a peculiar message here to the backslider, 
to you who once had oil in your lamp, so that it 
burned with a bright flame, so that you rejoiced in 
daily communion with your Saviour. The Bible was 
a precious book to you, full of comfort and support. 
You rejoiced in the prayer-meeting, you delighted 
in the testimony meeting. Wherever Christ was, 
and wherever men and women were talking about 
him in love and sympathy, there you rejoiced to be. 
But as time went on you were drawn away after 
the things of the world, and finally were lulled to 
sleep. The things of Christ lost their interest to 
you. And now, when I confront you with the cry of 
the text, " Behold, the bridegroom cometh ; go ye 
out to meet him," you awake to the fact that there is 
no oil left in your lamp. Your Christian experience 
is a poor burned-out thing. As the oil diminishes, 
the wick sputters and smokes awhile, and then ut- 
terly dies for lack of nourishment. So it was when 
your Christian life died. You ceased to feed it with 
prayer and Bible reading and Christian service. 
You ceased to do anything for the Lord, the oil was 
used up, and you are now without any clear hope in 
Jesus Christ. Your name may still be on the church 
book, but the devotion and love for Christ that 
were once in your heart have disappeared. What are 
you going to do about it? How are you going to 



200 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



greet your Lord? Will you take that poor old 
empty lamp up to him at last and say, " Let me in. I 
did light my lamp. I filled it once and it burned 
brightly, but it burned out and I forgot to fill it. Let 
me in." Christ has told us what the answer will be. 
I beg you not to wait for the judgment to see that 
answer confirmed. Jesus says that the answer will 
be, " I know you not." Once you were known to 
the Lord, but you treated him with discourtesy and 
contempt. You turned your heart away from him, 
and gave your attention and your admiration to his 
enemies. O backslider from God, come back to 
your Lord, and in humble repentance and faith see 
that your lamp is filled again at the mercy-seat. 

This is a wonderfully impressive story, illustrating 
the awful sin of neglect. It was not a set, malicious 
purpose on the part of these five girls to show dis- 
respect to the bridegroom by going to the wedding 
without any oil in their lamps. They all had a sort 
of general idea that they would be ready and well 
equipped when the time came. But down in the 
heart there was indifference as to the wishes of the 
bridegroom. And so not caring very much about it, 
not being deeply interested in the matter, it was easy 
enough to neglect it. I call your attention to the 
fact that neglect in this case, as indeed in every case, 
has exactly the same result as a malicious purpose to 
do evil. To neglect an education means to grow up 
in ignorance, just as surely as if a man set himself 



A SOCIETY TRAGEDY. 



201 



in malice against books and learning. To neglect 
to come into the warmth of the house means to leave 
yourself unsheltered to the cold and the storm. To 
neglect your friend means to hurt the feelings and 
wound the heart. So to neglect the " great salva- 
tion " which Jesus Christ has purchased for you with 
his own blood means not only to wound his heart 
and insult his tenderness and devotion, but it means 
that your soul will be left without refuge in the day 
of death and at the judgment seat of Christ. 

This story ought to arouse us all to action. Every 
Christian among us who is seeking day by day to 
keep the lamp trimmed and burning ought to be 
aroused to deeper consecration, to more intense ear- 
nestness, that we may by our example and influence 
not only be constantly ready to meet our Lord at 
his coming, but that our being awake and quick to 
do our duty may have the effect to arouse others 
from their slumber. There is a world of meaning 
in those words of Paul, " Look not every man on 
his own things, but every man also on the things of 
others." We ought to think of our neighbor's spir- 
itual life. If we see his light burning dimly we 
should not call attention to it in a critical way, to dis- 
courage him, but seek by a bright light in our own 
window, and by loving sympathy to awaken him to 
his danger. If your light has once burned, but has 
now become dark, surely this is God's call to you to 
fill your lamp again ere it is too late. After the door 



202 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



is shut is no time to go to buy oil. Why put your soul 
in jeopardy by living another hour in your cold and 
backslidden position? Return from your wander- 
ings, repent of your backsliding, pray God for for- 
giveness of your sins, and pledge him your service 
anew ! 

I may be speaking to some one who is greatly 
discouraged. Life is heavy with sorrow, sin has 
grown strong and powerful, the way seems dark, and 
you do not know how, beset as you are, to find Christ 
and salvation. What is the message to you ? I will 
tell you. Do the simple thing which you can do. 
Do the thing which anybody can do. Say, " God be 
merciful to me a sinner !" Break with your sins by 
coming to Jesus. He has promised to see you 
through. Put him to the test. 



XX. 



The Book of Wishes. 

" What wilt thou that I should do unto thee ?" — Mark 10 : 

Nathaniel Hawthorne, in " Mosses from an 
Old Manse," tells the story of a strange intelligence 
office, where a great book was kept in which the clerk 
recorded all the wishes of idle hearts, the aspirations 
of deep hearts, the desperate longings of miserable 
hearts, and the evil prayers of perverted hearts. One 
interesting thing about this book was that, while 
there was an endless diversity of mood and circum- 
stance, there was yet a strange similarity in the real 
groundwork; so that any one page of the volume, 
whether written in the days before the flood, in the 
yesterday that has just gone by, or to be written on 
the morrow that is close at hand or a thousand years 
hence, might serve as a specimen of the whole. Of 
course, there were occasionally wild and erratic 
wishes, like that of the astronomer who recorded a 
wish to behold the opposite side of the moon, which, 
unless the system of the firmament be reversed, can 
never be turned toward the earth. On the same page 



204 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



of the volume was written the wish of a little child 
to have the stars for playthings. 

The great wishes, however, were the same, and 
were written down over and over again, with endless 
diversity of statement and circumstance, but always 
really the same. I am sure it will be profitable to us 
to consider some of these wishes which the universal 
experience of mankind shows to be the supreme 
longings of the heart, especially since it is suggested 
by our text and confirmed by the entire teaching of 
Jesus, that whatever we really desire, if it is good 
enough to be true, our divine Lord is willing to be- 
stow upon us. 

In Hawthorne's strange book the most ordinary 
wish, which was written down with wearisome re- 
currence, was for wealth. Sometimes only for small 
sums, and then again for vast amounts. The desire 
for wealth — that is, for abundance, riches more 
than we need for immediate use — is, I think, uni- 
versal among all healthy human souls. No good 
man, in his senses, likes to go scrimped and starved, 
having barely enough to get along on and nothing 
over to dispense in generous hospitality. God deals 
bountifully with everything. His manifestation 
throughout the entire universe is that of a God who 
has abundance. He pours forth out of the treasure- 
house of his power, wisdom and beauty, flooding the 
world with good things. We are God's children, 
and it is natural for us to desire to have abundance, 



THE BOOK OF WISHES. 



205 



and God is willing to give it to us, and of the 
best sort too. Under the present order of things 
in the financial world, one of the saddest features 
is the inequality in the possession of wealth. In a 
perfect world none would use their riches regardless 
of the blessing and comfort of their fellows. Sin has 
brought about all that is uncomfortable and evil in 
the distribution of material wealth ; though, unequal 
as conditions are to-day, Christianity is steadily 
making them better. The world is far better to-day 
as a place for the multitudes to live in than it has ever 
been since the dawn of history. Some one has 
written : 

" Oh, the earth is full of sinning 

And of trouble and of woe, 
But the devil makes an inning 

Every time you say it's so, 
And the way to set him scowling 

And to put him back a pace 
Is to stop the stupid growling 

And to look things in the face. 

" There is much that needs amending 

In the present time, no doubt ; 
There is right that needs defending 

There a wrong needs crushing out, 
And we hear the groans and curses 

Of the poor who starve and die 
While the men with swollen purses 

In the place of hearts go by. 



" If you glance at history's pages 
In all lands and eras known, 



206 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



You will find the vanished ages 

Far more wicked than our own. 
As you scan each word and letter, 

You will realize it more 
That the world to-day is better 

Than it ever was before. 

" But in spite of all the trouble 
That obscures the sun to-day, 
Just remember it was double 
In the ages passed away." 

But while there is this inequality still among us, 
the essence of wealth, that for which wealth stands, 
comfort and respectability, Jesus Christ is able to be- 
stow to-day upon every sincerely seeking soul. 
Many men have great wealth, but neither comfort 
nor respectability; while others have very little of 
this world's goods and yet are rich in character, rich 
in those high qualities of heart and soul which give 
them peace and honor. If a man had his choice, it 
would be infinitely wiser to have the true riches of 
the spirit than any amount of riches for the body. 
Earthly riches often take wings and fly away, and 
their limitations are very sharp and decisive ; but the 
riches of the soul abide and not even death can lay 
his cold hand upon them. There is no excuse for 
any of us going without spiritual wealth. The treas- 
ure-house of God is inexhaustible, and Christ is hold- 
ing out to us an open hand. 

A good second in that wonder-book was the wish 
for power. That is one of the great longings of the 



THE BOOK OF WISHES. 



207 



human heart. Every healthy man longs to make his 
mark in the world. Every sane woman desires to be 
charming and influential among those about her. It 
is idle and wicked to try to crucify an honest, intelli- 
gent desire for power among men. All civilization, 
all progress in invention, in arts, in science and re- 
ligion are in a high degree due to this tremendous 
incentive of the soul. This love of power, this hun- 
ger for it, is given us by our Father, God, who is all- 
powerful. And when we are willing to have the 
best kind of power we may ask without reserve at 
the mercy-seat. God is able to bestow upon each 
one of us a charm and an influence far surpassing 
anything we have ever known, when we are willing 
to consecrate ourselves to use every ounce of power 
given us for the blessing of our fellow men. Brown- 
ing makes Paracelsus say : 

" Be sure that God 
Ne'er dooms to waste the strength he deigns impart." 

When God can trust us with increased power, he 
will bestow it upon us. In his early ministry Thomas 
Chalmers, though an able and eloquent preacher, and 
highly intellectual, found his sermons to be utterly 
without power over the people. When he was about 
twenty-nine years old he was stricken with disease, 
and for some time his life was despaired of. On his 
bed of sickness he received a new religious experi- 
ence. He thoroughly consecrated himself to the 



2o8 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



work of the ministry, and became a new man. 
Previous to that illness people said he was more in- 
tellectual than pious, but from the time he arose from 
his sick bed he seemed to realize that he was the 
mouthpiece of God. He became the most influential 
preacher in Scotland. The great men of the nation 
flocked to hear him. Channing, prime minister of 
the kingdom, was moved to tears, and Wilberforce 
wrote : " All the world is wild about Dr. Chalmers." 
God had been able to trust the new Chalmers who 
had given himself in all humility and abandon to 
him. Do you long for real power? Jesus is stand- 
ing before you saying, " What wilt thou that I 
should do unto thee ? " 

Another of the universal wishes is the wish for love 
and fellowship. This, too, belongs to every normal 
and healthy human soul. It is in many ways the 
sweetest thing that God has given to us. Human love 
has power beyond all words to describe, to comfort 
and bless the heart. Jacob Riis, whom President 
Roosevelt once pronounced the most useful citi- 
zen of New York City, tells in his autobiography his 
own love-story. He had been in this country a good 
while, and was very lonely and homesick. He hoped 
for a letter from the Old World. Every day, when 
the letter-carrier came up the street, his hopes rose 
high until he had passed. Years went by and the let- 
ter he longed for never came. Finally, one autumn 
day, he went to his office and found it lying there. 



THE BOOK OF WISHES. 



209 



The instant he saw it he knew by the throbbing of 
his heart what it was. He sat as much as a quarter 
of an hour staring dumbly at the unopened envelope. 
Then he arose slowly, put it in his pocket and stum- 
bled homeward, walking as if in a dream. He went 
up to his room and locked himself in. And there he 
read that blessed love-letter that became a part of his 
life, to abide forever with light and joy and thanks- 
giving. " How much of sunshine," exclaims Riis, 
" one little letter can contain ! Six years seemed all 
at once the merest breath of time to have waited for 
it. Toil, hardship, trouble — with that letter in my 
keep ? I laughed out loud at the thought. The sound 
of my own voice sobered me. I knelt down and 
prayed long and fervently that I might strive with 
all my might to deserve the great happiness that had 
come to me." The stars were long out when his 
landlord, who had heard his restless walk overhead, 
knocked to ask if anything was the matter. He saw 
the light in his face when he opened the door, and he 
took a sidelong step, shading his eyes to get a better 
look, and held out his hand. 

" Wish you joy, old man," he said, heartily. 
" Tell us of it, will you? " And he did. 

And Riis declares that the proverb, " All the world 
loves a lover," was realized in the days that followed, 
when everybody seemed to understand and the 
whole world smiled back on him all day long. Only 
the other day he was lecturing in Chicago, when a 



2IO 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



woman came up and asked if he was the Riis she 
had traveled with on a Hamburg steamer twenty- 
five years before, and who was going home to be 
married. She had never forgotten how happy he 
was. She and the rest of the passengers held it to 
be their duty toward him to warn him that " she " 
might not turn out as nice as he thought she was. 
The woman looked him all over and said, " I guess 
we might have spared ourselves the trouble.' , 

This is a suggestion of what human love can do 
for a person in making all the sorrows and trials of 
life seem little and insignificant, compared to its 
great blessings. And yet, great and divine as it is, 
such a love, even at its best, is a small thing in its 
fullness and richness of blessing, when compared 
with the full revelation of the heart of the divine 
Saviour to a human soul. When a man or a woman 
looks upon the Lord Jesus Christ and sees him com- 
ing from the glory of heaven to suffer and die upon 
the cross; beholds him rising from the grave and 
ascending up on high, interceding in his or her be- 
half, and says, deep down in the consciousness of the 
heart, " He did it all for me ; for me he bared his 
back to the smiters ; for me he held out his hand to 
be nailed to the cross ; it is to me he offers this un- 
dying love; for me he is fitting up heavenly man- 
sions " — the soul that really enters into that love, 
and knows that fellowship, has found an experience 
that no sickness or loss or death can ever interfere 



THE BOOK OF WISHES. 



211 



with. O brother, sister, Jesus stands before you 
inquiring, " What wilt thou that I should do unto 
thee?" 

Then there is the wish for goodness. That is a wish 
which only God can grant to the man or the woman 
who has lost it. The saddest part of the story which 
Hawthorne tells us is concerning a man who came 
into that strange intelligence office with a downcast 
look. It was such an aspect as he might have had 
had he lost the very soul out of his body and trav- 
eled all the world over, searching in the dust of the 
highways and along the shady foot-paths and be- 
neath the leaves of the forest and among the sands 
of the seashore, in the hope of recovering it again. 
With a sad face he came up to the man of intelli- 
gence. " I have lost — " he began, and then he 
paused. 

" Yes," said the clerk, " I see that you have lost, 
but what? " 

" I have lost a precious jewel," replied the unfortu- 
nate man, " the like of which is not to be found 
among any prince's treasures. While I possessed 
it the contemplation of it was my sole and sufficient 
happiness. No price should have purchased it of me, 
but it has fallen from my bosom, where I wore it 
in my careless wanderings about the city." 

After causing the stranger to describe the marks 
of his lost jewel, the intelligencer opened a drawer 
where were deposited whatever articles had been 



212 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



picked up in the streets, until the rightful owners 
should claim them. It was a strange collection: 
there were wedding rings, and white roses, and 
blush roses, and locks of hair, and many of these 
things were fragrant with perfumes. Perhaps a 
sweet scent had departed from the lives of their 
former possessors ever since they had so wilfully or 
negligently lost them. And in the corner of the 
drawer was found a great pearl, looking like the soul 
of celestial purity, congealed and polished. 

"There is my jewel — my very pearl!" cried the 
stranger, almost beside himself with rapture. " It is 
mine ! Give it me this moment or I shall perish !" 

" I perceive," said the man of intelligence, exam- 
ining it more closely, " that this is the Pearl of Great 
Price." 

" The very same," answered the stranger. " Judge 
then of my misery at losing it out of my bosom! 
Restore it to me ! I must not live without it an in- 
stant longer ! " 

" Pardon me," rejoined the intelligencer, calmly. 
" You ask what is beyond my duty. This pearl, as 
you well know, is held upon a peculiar tenure, and, 
having once let it escape from your keeping, you 
have no greater claim to it than any other person, 
nay, not so great. I cannot give it back." 

Nor could the entreaties of the miserable man, 
who saw before his eyes the jewel of his life without 
the power to reclaim it, soften the heart of this stern 



THE BOOK OF WISHES. 



213 



being, impassive to human sympathy, though exer- 
cising such an apparent influence oyer human forces. 
Finally the loser of the Pearl of Great Price clutched 
his hands in his hair and rushed madly forth with 
despair in his face. 

Hawthorne is true to life in that picture. The lost 
pearl of goodness cannot be restored again by any 
earthly power. But, thank God, Jesus Christ is the 
great restorer of the soul. He is able to make us 
worthy to wear again the lost pearl of goodness. 
He has power on earth to forgive sins. He who 
looked down into the blind, but excited and longing, 
face of Bartimseus and inquired, " What wilt thou 
that I should do unto thee? 1 ' knowing that he had 
power to give him his sight, is standing before you, 
conscious as you are of your sins, conscious as you 
are of the wicked habits that you have no power to 
break, conscious as you are of the loss of moral 
purity. Christ stands before you knowing that he 
has the power to break your bondage, to cleanse your 
heart, to lift from your soul the burden of guilt, and 
cause you to rejoice in a sweet sense of pardon and 
peace. He is saying to you, " What wilt thou that 
I should do unto thee ?" What will your answer be ? 

You notice how clearly and strongly Christ puts 
it. It is not what you wish to do. It is the active, 
aggressive word, " will," which means a wish in ac- 
tion. As some one says, a wish may be but an empty 
cloud drifting idly by, casting a shadow that bends 



214 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



no blade of grass ; willing is a cloud heavy with rain, 
pouring forth its treasures to refresh the earth. A 
wish may be but a leaf through which the tree 
breathes; it rustles, whispers, withers, and is forgot- 
ten : a will is the fruit summing up the juices of the 
tree, the ripening apples that are good for food. You 
may wish without acting; will is the soul of action. 
Apply it to yourself now. You may say, face to 
face with this earnest, soul-stirring theme, " I wish I 
were a Christian," and yet go away and drift farther 
from God than ever. But, on the other hand, you 
may act as blind Bartimseus did. When Christ said 
to him, "What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?" 
he immediately responded, " Lord, that I might re- 
ceive my sight, — " and he went away rejoicing. And 
so, if you will respond like that to Christ's in- 
quiry and say in answer to Christ's question, " Lord, 
that my sins may be forgiven, that my heart may be 
cleansed, that my soul may be awakened, that the 
graces of the Spirit may grow and bloom in my 
character, that a holy charm may fall upon my life, 
may be in my every word, making my every footstep 
a benediction and a blessing" — if that is your prayer, 
heaven will ring with music over the glory that shall 
come to your heart ! 



XXI. 



Living a Day at a Time. 

" The thing of a day in its day." — I Kings 8: 59 (Rev. Ver., 
Marg. Ren.) 

" Living a day at a time" is a still more modern 
translation into our own everyday speech. This is 
a part of an address made by Solomon at the close of 
the longest recorded prayer in the Bible. At the close 
of a great prayer for the forgiveness of God, and his 
guidance and care over himself and the nation, Sol- 
omon arose from his knees and exhorted the people 
that they should live reverent and prayerful lives, 
assuring them that if they did so God would give 
them the blessing which they needed every day as 
their necessity should arise. It is in this thought 
that we find our message to-day. It is a great law 
of God that everything should be attended to at the 
proper time. The Lord does all his work that way. 
He has things building, sometimes for thousands of 
years, but they are never finished until the time 
arises for their use. He prepares veins of coal and 
reservoirs of oil and ledges of quartz against the 
time when they will be needed ; but he never lets his 



2l6 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



fruit be picked until it is ripe. He deals with us 
now as he did with the pilgrims from Egypt on 
their way to Canaan, when he fed them only a day's 
rations of manna at a time. His blessings reach us 
when we need them, if we on our part have fulfilled 
the proper conditions. 

Jesus taught the same lesson to his disciples when 
he gave them that wonderful little prayer which is 
rising to the lips of the whole world, and in which 
he taught us to pray, " Give us this day our daily 
bread." We are not to worry about to-morrow; 
we are to eat and be thankful to-day, and on the 
strength of that cross the border-line of to-morrow, 
knowing that we shall be met by the fresh mercies 
of God that are " new every morning." 

God emphasizes this law of punctuality by divid- 
ing everything into seasons. In every day there is 
the morning, the high noon, and the evening. In 
every year there is the spring, the summer, the au- 
tumn, and the winter. Each part of the day, and 
each season of the year, has its own necessities and 
requirements, and God meets them with a punctual- 
ity that never fails. And our human lives are like 
that. We need different blessings at different sea- 
sons of life, and different duties press upon us as the 
seasons of life change. Some poet has painted a 
very pretty picture of the changing conditions of 
life's seasons : 



LIVING A DAY AT A TIME. 



217 



" Two children down by the shining strand, 

With eyes as blue as the summer sea, 
While the sinking sun fills all the land 

With the glow of a golden mystery; 
Laughing aloud at the sea-mew's cry, 

Gazing with joy on its snowy breast, 
Till the first star looks from the evening sky, 

And the amber bars stretch over the west. 

" A soft green dell by the breezy shore, 

A sailor lad and a maiden fair, 
Hand clasped in hand, while the tale of yore 

Is borne again on the listening air. 
For love is young, though love be old, 

And love alone the heart can fill ; 
And the dear old tale that has been told 

In the days gone by is spoken still. 

" A trim-built home on a sheltered bay ; 

A wife looking out on a glistening sea; 
A prayer for the loved one far away, 

And prattling imps 'neath the old roof-tree ; 
A lifted latch and a radiant face 

By the open door in the falling night ; 
A welcome home and a warm embrace 

From the love of his youth and children bright. 

" An aged man in an old arm-chair ; 

A golden light from the western sky, 
His wife by his side, with her silvered hair, 

And the open Book of God close by ; 
Sweet on the bay the gloaming falls, 

And bright is the glow of the evening star; 
But dearer to them are the jasper walls 

And the golden streets of the land afar. 

" An old churchyard on the green hillside, 
Two lying still in their peaceful rest; 



218 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



The fishermen's boats going out with the tide 

In the fiery glow of the amber west ; 
Children's laughter and old men's sighs, 

The night that follows the morning clear, 
A rainbow bridging our darkened skies, 

Are the round of our lives from year to year." 

We should learn this great lesson which God 
teaches us concerning his own conduct, and apply it 
in our own lives. Promptness and punctuality in 
the doing of duty or the receiving of blessings, are 
as important in our lives as in the infinitely higher 
career of our Heavenly Father. Timeliness is al- 
ways a question of importance, and many times a 
very slight opportunity seized at once settles a whole 
career in the way of usefulness and blessing. 

The recent death of Dr. R. S. Storrs, of Brook- 
lyn, brings to mind an interesting and forceful inci- 
dent in the life of his father, who was also a distin- 
guished minister. The father bore the name that he 
gave to his son, Richard Salter Storrs. In 1817 
the elder Storrs was a member of the graduating 
class in the theological school at Andover. A class- 
mate of his had an appointment to preach as a can- 
didate for the First Congregational Church in 
Braintree, Massachusetts. The Thursday previous 
to that Sabbath, the classmate was splitting wood. 
Unfortunately, his hat fell from his head, and the 
ax struck through the hat. Thoroughly provoked, 
he went upstairs, sought out the room of young 
Storrs, and showed his hat with a great hole in it. 



LIVING A DAY AT A TIME. 



219 



He said, " Look here ! See what I have done — stove 
a hole in my hat. I shall split my head open next. 
You must go to Braintree and preach for me next 
Sunday." 

Storrs could not refrain from laughing at the pre- 
dicament, and offered to loan him his own hat. The 
classmate answered, " No, I will not go wearing a 
borrowed hat." Storrs consented to take his place, 
and drove in the chaise to Braintree, for there were 
no railroads at that time. He preached there on 
Sunday, charming the audience by his eloquence, 
deep thought, and fine metaphors. The church 
unanimously pressed an invitation upon him to be- 
come their pastor, and would not take no for an 
answer. After careful deliberation, he accepted the 
call, and held that pastorate for sixty-two years in 
a career of great and growing usefulness. Full of 
honors, he died there, and his grave is in the ceme- 
tery across the street from the church he served with 
such happiness and fidelity. Dr. Storrs used to say, 
" I went through the hole in that hat to my life- 
work" — a signal illustration of our text that we 
must attend to " the thing of a day in its day." 

An act of fidelity toward God and our duty al- 
ways gains in effectiveness if it is accomplished at 
the very time when it becomes duty to us. You 
may see an interesting illustration of this in the case 
of the late Rear-Admiral John W. Philip, who was 
the famous captain of the Texas during the Span- 



220 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



ish-American war. He was not only a brave and 
skilful commander, and a man of the noblest char- 
acter, but he was a most earnest and faithful Chris- 
tian. He it was who, after he had carried the Texas 
through the battle of Santiago, in which he had done 
heroic work in destroying the fleet of Cervera, when 
the victory was won, and while the powder smoke 
and the soiled sweat were still on the faces of his 
crew, summoned all hands on deck, and with 
uncovered head and reverent voice, said, " I want 
to make public acknowledgment that I believe 
in God the Father Almighty. I want all the 
officers and men to lift their hats, and from their 
hearts to offer silent thanks to the Almighty." Not 
only did that act of faithfulness to God make an im- 
pression which could never be erased from the minds 
and hearts of the men who stood on the deck of the 
Texas, but, telegraphed as it was all over the land, 
and under the oceans to other lands, it sent an elec- 
tric thrill of courage and faith to Christians in every 
part of the globe. If Captain Philip had thrust his 
impulse of thanksgiving to God aside, even for a 
single day, he would have lost the greatest opportu- 
nity of his life for loyalty to his Lord. But, happily, 
he had learned the secret of doing " the thing of a 
day in its day." 

Every true Christian must be an opportunist in 
this, that he will seek to do the right thing at the 



LIVING A DAY AT A TIME. 



221 



right time. What is right at one time may be 
wrong at another. I have heard of a teacher who 
asked a schoolboy, who happened to be a physician's 
son, the question, " What is the meaning of false 
doctrine?" The reply was, " Please, sir, it's when 
the doctor gives the wrong stuff to the people who 
are sick." The boy stumbled on the details, but he 
got at the root of the matter. It is impossible that 
all days shall be alike to us. Some days will be full 
of struggle and seeming defeat, when all we can do 
is to keep our faces to the foe and fight loyally, hop- 
ing for the coming of the better day of victory. It 
is as much a soldier's duty to expose himself to the 
danger of bullets and sword-thrusts and death at 
the proper time, as it is for him to remain quiet in 
camp at other times. So it is the Christian's duty 
to stand by the right ; and if the fortunes of spiritual 
warfare call him forth to the firing line, where for 
the present he must suffer and lose, then the thing 
for that day is sacrifice for Christ's sake and without 
a murmur. There is a silly and wicked proverb, 
" A man must live," which is used to cover up our 
cowardice when we run away from duty. Some 
one in a little poem exposes the folly of that senti- 
ment : 

" f A man must live.' We justify 
Low shift and trick to treason high, 
A little vote for a little gold 



222 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



To a whole Senate bought and sold, 
With this self-evident reply, 
' A man must live.' 

" But is it so ? Pray tell us why 
Life at such cost you have to buy ! 
In what religion were you told 
' A man must live ? ' 

" There are times when a man must die. 
Imagine for a battle-cry 
From soldiers with a sword to hold, 
From soldiers with a flag unrolled, 
This coward's whine, this liar's lie : 
' A man must live.' " 

Our message has special interest to all who are 
seeking to be helpful to their fellow men. If we are 
to bless those who are about us, we shall certainly 
have to be ready to do it day by day. A smile at 
the right time is worth more than a year of devoted 
service at some other time, to bless the career of 
some people whom we meet. A good, strong hand- 
shake and an encouraging word coming in the nick 
of time to a man almost discouraged and ready to 
give up will often turn a hard pressed, baffled soul 
toward heaven when it was about to drop into hell. 

A cabman in Liverpool once signed the pledge 
for Rev. Charles Garrett, but soon after broke it. 
The poor fellow was so conscience-stricken and 
ashamed that he tried to keep out of the way of Mr. 
Garrett, and would slip around the block and take 



LIVING A DAY AT A TIME. 



223 



another street when he saw him coming. One day, 
however, Garrett found the poor, miserable man 
when he was just about to give up entirely and 
throw himself without reserve into the whirlpool of 
dissipation. The good man seized him by the hand 
and said, " John, when the road is slippery and your 
horse falls down, what do you do with him?" 

" I help him up again," replied John, in amaze- 
ment. 

" Well, I have come to do the same," said Mr. 
Garrett, tenderly. " The road was slippery, I know, 
John, and you fell ; but here's my hand to help you 
up again." 

The sympathy and kindness thrilled the man to 
the core of his heart. He caught the friendly hand 
in a vise-like grip and said, "God bless you, sir; 
you'll never have cause to regret this ; I'll never fall 
again." And that time he kept his word. 

Garrett saved the man because he attended to 
" the thing of a day in its day." 

We ought to find in this text a message that will 
be very helpful to us in bearing up under the bur- 
dens of life. We are only required to live a day at 
a time. Many of us take too long views of life : we 
look far off down the misty future, and our imagina- 
tion conjures up all sorts of hobgoblins and ghosts 
of trouble and worry that may confront us after 
awhile. Now all that is wicked ; we have nothing to 
do with that far-off time. We may have gone home 



224 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



to heaven before it comes ; and if it comes, God will 
be able to take care of us and bring us off more than 
conquerors over anything we shall be compelled to 
meet. On the other hand, if we take short views 
of life, as all the Bible teaching shows to be our duty, 
we shall be greatly comforted and encouraged. 
Who is there of us that cannot, by the help of God, 
get through the duties of to-day and fight our temp- 
tations off until to-morrow? Surely there is not 
one. But if we do that, the courage and strength 
of our victory to-day will bring us to to-morrow in 
a better condition for the battle than we are now. 
And so, day by day, we shall climb the hill of life, 
each day getting nearer to the top, and each day tri- 
umphing in our place. 

Christina Rossetti looked at life as a climb up-hill, 
but by grappling with the difficulties of only one day 
at a time her vision found rest and peace. Her 
little dialogue between fellow travelers is very com- 
forting : 

" Does the road wind up-hill all the way? 
Yes, to the very end. 
Will the day's journey take the whole long day? 
From morn to night, my friend. 

" But is there for the night a resting-place? 
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin. 
May not the darkness hide it from my face? 
You cannot miss that inn. 



LIVING A DAY AT A TIME. 



" Shall I meet other wayfarers at night? 
Those who have gone before. 
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight? 
They will not keep you standing at that door. 

" Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak? 
Of labor you shall find the sum. 
Will there be beds for me and all who seek? 
Yes, beds for all who come." 



XXII. 



The Devil's Bait-Stick. 

" Lest Satan should get an advantage of us : for we are not 
ignorant of his devices." — 2 Corinthians 2: 11. 

The devil sets traps for men's souls, and baits 
them with infernal ingenuity. No man is in so 
great danger of being taken into one of these snares 
of the devil as the one who is proud and self-suffi- 
cient and imagines there are no such things as man- 
traps into which he may fall. I used to know a 
great many of the old trappers in my boyhood on the 
frontier along the Pacific coast. The cunning of 
those men was always a great wonder to me. They 
would go into a neighborhood where the beaver and 
the mink were abundant, and literally honeycomb 
every stream and path with traps, yet they would do 
it so carefully that the beaver would never discover 
their presence. With still more cunning Satan sets 
traps for men. The marvel of it is that though the 
Scripture says, " In vain the net is spread in the 
sight of any bird," men will see the net spread, will 
see other men caught in it, watch their convulsions 
as they struggle to get away, hear their cries of hor- 



THE DEVIL'S BAIT-STICK. 



227 



ror and remorse, and later see them carried to their 
burial the acknowledged victims of sin, yet even 
while they look on will be themselves caught in the 
same trap. 

One of the most successful baits that the devil 
uses on his bait-stick to catch the men and women 
of our time is the habit of taking stimulants. 
And I know I can hardly speak the words but some 
will say, " Will he never give us a rest on the sub- 
ject of temperance?" Ah, how gladly I would give 
the subject a rest, if men would only quit walking 
into the devil's trap of strong drink. If I spoke 
about this subject in proportion to the number of 
times it is impressed upon me by broken-hearted 
mothers, by anguish-stricken wives, and ruined men 
and women, I would speak of it far more frequently 
than I do. So far as a preacher's observation can 
go, as the sins of men are forced home on him, for 
every man broken down by any other sin ten men 
are caught in the snare of strong drink and forever 
engulfed. 

Neither is this a trap which catches boys and 
young men and young women only. Multitudes 
of men middle-aged and past are caught in it. An 
eminent English minister has spoken of the " dan- 
gerous years " of a man's life as not those between 
sixteen and twenty-five, as is commonly supposed, 
but as those between forty-five and sixty. The idea 
is so contrary to the common opinion as to be quite 



228 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



startling. We have been so long accustomed to 
think of the early period of human life as one of 
peril, that the thought of peculiar danger in middle- 
life, or in old age, strikes us as an exaggeration. But 
there is much of truth in it. Most sins come from 
thoughts that have long nestled in the imagination. 
The devil traps more men through the imagination 
than in any other way. Men who have reached 
middle-life without falling into outbreaking sin, 
though they have often had the disposition to do it, 
frequently get reckless and off their guard as mid- 
dle age passes, and are drawn into the devil's traps 
which could not ensnare them in their youth. I 
knew a man who never touched strong drink until 
after he was fifty years of age. And yet, in less 
than ten years from the time he took his first social 
glass at a public dinner, he had ruined a large busi- 
ness, broken his wife's heart, shamed his sons, and 
died in an insane asylum, to which he had been 
taken after a spell of delirium tremens. No man or 
woman is safe who touches strong drink. And if 
any of you are being drawn into its toils, I wish I 
could show you the depths to which it will naturally 
and easily lead you. 

I know the personal story of a man in the middle 
West, who inherited large wealth and always lived 
a moral life until he was thirty-five years of age. 
He was then drawn into politics, and the peculiar 
temptations surrounding him led him to become 



THE DEVIL'S BAIT-STICK. 



229 



addicted to the habit of strong drink. The habit 
grew on him, and he continued to drink for fifteen 
years. In those years he wasted a fortune of three 
hundred thousand dollars. Af fifty years of age 
he came home one night drunk, fell down an 
embankment near the house, and skinned his face 
until it was much disfigured. He spent the night 
in drunken sleep, and the next morning was hag- 
gard, but sober. When he looked into the mirror, 
as he was dressing, he started back in amazement 
at his face. 

" What did that to my face?" he inquired of his 
wife. 

" Oh," was her reply, " you came home drunk, 
as usual, last night, and fell down the embankment, 
and tore the skin off it." 

The man looked at his face for a while in awful 
disgust. Never before had he seen his drunken- 
ness in this light. Then he turned to his wife, and 
said, as he lifted his hand to heaven, " If that's 
what a man does when he gets drunk, God helping 
me, I'll never touch liquor again !" 

From that day his decision was absolute, and he 
lived a noble and pure life. He lived thirty-seven 
years longer, an honorable, sober-minded, God-fear- 
ing citizen, and died honored by all. What a strik- 
ing illustration of that wonderful figure of Saint 
James, when he compares the Word of God to a mir- 
ror! If you would see the deadly character of the 



230 THE KING'S STEWARDS. 

sin of taking strong drink, or of any other sin, you 
must come and look in the mirror of God's 
Word. If you will look into that perfect law of 
liberty, you may find with the divine help power to 
free yourself of your sin and to escape from the 
snare of the devil. 

The bait-stick of Satan's snare is often adorned 
with brilliant and charming, but dangerous, associ- 
ations. Many a young man never thought of tak- 
ing strong drink, or of touching cards to gamble, or 
of betting on the races, until at the club or at some 
political society he was brought into touch with 
people who did these things, and with whom he 
thought it was for his interest to stand well. Noth- 
ing is more important to any one than the choice of 
associations. The old proverbs, " A man is known 
by the company he keeps," and, " Birds of a feather 
flock together," are suggestive of the great truth 
that no man or woman will long stand out against 
the influence of the people with whom he or she con- 
tinually associates. And so it is that many young 
people go into social gatherings or clubs for per- 
fectly innocent purposes, and find after a while that 
they were to them the devil's traps because of the 
personal associations which undermined their moral 
principles. Beware of evil associations ! 

I want to speak of another bait used by the enemy 
of souls, that keeps a great many men and women 
out of heaven. For lack of a better phrase, I will 



THE DEVIL'S BAIT-STICK. 



231 



call it negative morality. Many people, having been 
reared under religious influences, have never been 
able to throw off altogether those early convictions, 
and they hold a peculiar attitude toward the Chris- 
tian church. They attend its services ; they sing its 
hymns; they listen more or less reverently to its 
prayers; they are entertained by its sermons, and 
yet they never rise to a personal, positive decision 
for Christ, which would mean their personal salva- 
tion. The devil's bait for them is to lull them into 
a sense of security — a feeling that they are so closely 
associated with the church that it is nearly as good 
as if they were Christians. 

A fisherman tells this story : He had gone with 
a friend for a day's fishing. The river was very 
low and clear, and the only chance was in crouching 
behind rocks and hiding themselves. Suddenly, as 
he bent down, absorbed in his work, not a sound 
about him but the tinkle of a waterfall and the brawl 
of the shallows, there came a faint bleat at his side. 
He looked over the rock, and there was a sheep 
standing deep in the water. He called to his friend, 
and together they lifted the poor beast out of the 
stream, up over the deep bushy bank. To their un- 
utterable disgust, it instantly turned and flopped in- 
to the water again. They lifted it out once more, 
and this time took care to take it away far enough to 
be safe. At once it began to walk, but only went 
round and round. 



232 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



" What is the matter with it?" asked the fisher- 
man. 

" Oh," said his country friend, " it's got the 
rounders, something the matter with the brain ; they 
think they are going on, but they are always going 
around." 

Now a great many people who attend church are 
like that. The only difference is, there is some- 
thing the matter with their hearts instead of their 
heads. But the action is just the same; they think 
they are going on, but they are always going round. 
If any who read this are in this condition, I pray 
God that the Holy Spirit may rouse you to realize 
your state. 

A great artist was once employed to paint the pic- 
ture of a very beautiful child. It belonged to a 
family of wealth. The father of the child was an 
infidel, the mother a Christian. After much study 
and research, it was decided that the picture should 
show the child asleep in prayer. The artist, of 
course, must catch the scene from an actual service 
in which the child should fall asleep during an ear- 
nest, faithful prayer. Evening after evening he 
visited the mother and child in their family worship, 
the father also being present. At length the oppor- 
tunity came, and when the mother's sweet petition to 
God was closed, the child was fast asleep, kneeling 
by her mother's side. In this position they re- 
mained for some time, until released by the artist. 



THE DEVIL'S BAIT-STICK. 



233 



The next evening the artist visited the family 
again, but this time his countenance wore a troubled 
look. Said he, " I cannot make the picture com- 
plete unless the immediate surroundings are shown, 
and especially the mother must be painted." 

" The picture shall be complete," said the father ; 
" you would as well also put the mother in the 
scene." 

Time wore on, and the painting was being devel- 
oped. But meantime a strange feeling of loneliness 
crept into the heart of the father. Something, too, 
of the attitude of worship, and the power of those 
sweet petitions from his wife's lips, had been used 
by the Holy Spirit to illuminate his conscience, and 
it seemed to him that it would break his heart to be 
shut out from that little group. Feeling thus, he 
visited the studio of the artist, and expressed the 
desire that he might also be painted in the picture in 
the attitude of prayer, kneeling with his wife and 
child. 

" No," said the artist, " it is too late. You would 
either add to or take from, and that must not be." 

" Add to or take from," the man repeated to him- 
self that evening, as he heard his wife's prayer. 

" Asleep in Prayer " hung long on the walls of the 
rich man's palace. But again the artist was called, 
this time to a Christian home. That evening the 
father prayed, and even to this day there hang upon 
the walls of the ancient palace two paintings — 



234 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



" Asleep in Prayer," the mother and the child, and 
" Awake in Christ," a group of father and mother 
and a young lady, while under the picture is this 
inscription : " You will either add to or take from." 

I am sure that some who read this ought to re- 
ceive it as God's personal message. You have had 
Christian training and Christian friends, and yet 
Satan has ensnared you into the net of inaction, so 
that there is great danger that, despite all your op- 
portunities and privileges to become a Christian, 
you will finally fail. Put your salvation beyond 
question this very hour by making an honest and 
public confession of Jesus Christ. 



XXIII. 



Fate Knocking at the Door. 

" Behold, I stand at the door, and knock : if any man hear 
my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will 
sup with him, and he with me." — Revelation 3 : 20. 

Christ is the arbiter of spiritual destiny. To 
know him, to have him for a guest in the heart, to 
sup with him at the table in daily fellowship, is to 
know the living presence of goodness and truth. 
Where Christ dwells evil skulks away, envy and 
jealousy vanish, and impurity cannot abide. Hence 
it is no fanciful word to say that when Christ comes 
knocking at the door of a man's heart, it is fate that 
is knocking for admittance. And no one ever 
reaches this highest destiny until he comes to know 
this sweet and familiar fellowship with Jesus Christ 
which is outlined in our text. 

A modern writer of fiction tells an interesting 
story of natural history concerning the northern 
reindeer. It seems that on those far-off plains, at 
a certain season, a hundred miles from the sea, in 
the midst of the Laplander's village, a young rein- 
deer will raise his broad muzzle to the north wind, 



236 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



and stare at the limitless distance for the space of a 
minute or more. He grows restless from that mo- 
ment, but he is yet alone. The next day a dozen of 
the herd look up from the cropping of the moss, 
snuffing the breeze. Then the Laps nod to one an- 
other, and the camp grows daily more unquiet. At 
times the whole herd of young deer stand and gaze, 
as it were, breathing hard through wide nostrils, then 
jostling each other and stamping the soft ground. 
They grow unruly, and it is hard to harness them 
into the light sleds. As the days pass, the Laps 
watch them more and more closely, well knowing 
what will happen sooner or later. And then, at last, 
in the northern twilight, the great herd begins to 
move. The impulse is simultaneous, irresistible; 
their heads are all turned in one direction. They 
move slowly at first, biting still, here and there, at 
the bunches of rich moss. Presently the slow step 
becomes a trot, they crowd more closely together, 
while the Laps hasten to gather up their last un- 
packed possessions, their cooking utensils and their 
wooden gods. The great herd breaks together 
from a trot to a gallop, from a gallop to a breakneck 
pace, the distant thunder of their united tread 
reaches the camp for a few minutes, and then they 
are gone out of sight and hearing to drink of the 
Polar Sea. The Laps follow after them, dragging 
painfully their laden sledges in the broad track left 
by the thousands of galloping beasts, a day's jour- 



FATE KNOCKING AT THE DOOR. 237 



ney, and they are yet far from the sea, and the path 
is yet broad. 

On the second day the path grows narrower, and 
there are stains of blood to be seen; far on the dis- 
tant plain before them their sharp eyes distinguish 
in the direct line a dark, motionless object, another, 
and yet another. The race has grown more des- 
perate and more wild as the stampede nears the sea. 
The weaker reindeer have been thrown down and 
trampled to death by their stronger fellows. A thou- 
sand sharp hoofs have crushed and cut through hide 
and flesh and bone. Ever swifter and more terrible 
in their motion, the ruthless herd has raced onward, 
careless of the slain, careless of food, careless of any 
drink but the sharp, salt water ahead of them. And 
when at last the Laplanders reach the shore, their 
deer are once more quietly grazing, once more tame 
and docile, once more ready to drag the sled wher- 
ever they are guided. Once in its life the reindeer 
must taste of the sea in one long, satisfying draught, 
and if he is hindered, he perishes. Neither man 
nor beast dare stand between him and the ocean in 
the hundred miles of his arrow-like path. 

We have in that fierce thirst of the reindeer for 
the Polar Sea, a figure of the yearning of the human 
heart for the water of life; for that high and satis- 
fying portion which we may only find in Christ, our 
Saviour, who in so many ways comes knocking at 
the door of our hearts. Sometimes this yearning 



238 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



is greater than at other times. Sometimes the land 
breezes of the world take away from our nostrils all 
breath of the salt sea of immortal hope. But again 
and again it will come to us, and without it we shall 
never have real peace. Nothing that this world has 
to bestow can ever give perfect rest or satisfaction to 
the immortal spirit that is in man. 

A gentleman relates how several business men, 
who were accustomed to handle large interests, met 
recently and were discussing their affairs. Finally 
one of them said, " Well, for my part, I do not get 
satisfaction. This doing of business is all well 
enough, and it has its pleasures as well as its suc- 
cesses ; but, after all, it does not seem to me to con- 
tain a rational end of life." " Exactly," said another. 
" What we want is an adequate life purpose. It 
has always seemed to me that religion ought to fur- 
nish such a purpose ; but, so far, it has done little to 
help me." A third said, " I want a church where 
I can go and be inspired — washed out of the every- 
day, common things, and get a glimpse of that 
which is lasting. Yes, sir, we are making a big 
failure in this matter of business success." A fourth 
added, " It doesn't satisfy. When a man has a mil- 
lion, he wants ten millions, and then a hundred mil- 
lions ; and when these fellows cannot amass any 
more, I am afraid a great wave of suicide will set in, 
out of a total disgust of life on that line." " There 
certainly is a sort of life that does not end in mere 



FATE KNOCKING AT THE DOOR. 239 



business routine/' said the first speaker. " I get 
glimpses of it enough to know that there is a reality, 
a substantiality, somewhere. What I want to know 
is myself, and my relation to the Everlasting. Is 
there a road that widens out forever into better 
thought, better hope, better will?" Then these men, 
who had been speaking to one another out of their 
hearts, agreed to get together once a week and talk 
the matter over. Now it is easy to see that these 
business men, like the reindeer of the north, had 
caught a breath from the immortal sea, and that 
there was in them the deep thirst for the living 
waters. Christ was knocking at the door of their 
hearts. To open the door and let him in would give 
peace to all such souls. No church can do you any 
good unless you make the church a genuine place 
of fellowship with other men and women who have 
the same fellowship with Christ as that to which you 
give yourself. 

This figure which Christ uses gives a very clear 
and unmistakable suggestion as to what any man 
who has not yet admitted Christ to the open fellow- 
ship of his heart and life ought to do. To become 
a Christian is no vague and unreal thing. When a 
visitor stands outside of your door and knocks, your 
privilege is plain. It is for you to go and open the 
door and give him welcome, if you wish him to come 
in. Now Jesus declares that that is his attitude 
toward your soul. You say, " I wish I were a real 



240 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



and sincere Christian." Very well, it is all in your 
own hands. He is knocking at your door. Rise 
up and open the door, and bid him enter. You say, 
" I have always admired Jesus, and there are times 
when it would take a tenderer word to express my 
feelings toward my divine Lord and Saviour." Then 
why don't you tell him so? Why don't you tell 
other people so ? We are like the old Puritans, oft- 
entimes, about the expression of our love toward 
Jesus. They were afraid to tell their wives and 
children that they loved them, and many a heart bled 
in deep silence. I suppose there was many another 
young maiden like Priscilla who felt like saying to 
her John Alden, " Speak for yourself, John !" as the 
silent fellow sat dumb by her side. Many people 
are like that in spiritual matters. They do not give 
utterance to God, or to their neighbors, concerning 
the feelings of their hearts. I have seen men and 
women who seemed to be waiting, getting no joy, 
no peace, no comfort out of their thoughts of God 
and heaven, until suddenly they were constrained 
to utter what was really in their hearts, and Christ 
came to their table and they were glad. 

Do you remember that beautiful scene in the 
morning-time by the little Sea of Galilee, when after 
the night's fishing Christ called his friends to come 
to the shore and have breakfast with him? And 
after the breakfast Christ asked Peter if he loved 
him. The hungry heart of Jesus longed for the re- 



FATE KNOCKING AT THE DOOR. 241 

sponse, as a lover asks his beloved over and over 
again for assurances of love; as a mother asks the 
little child for love's sweet answer. And Peter 
vowed that he did. And Christ asked again and 
again, until at last Peter blurted out, " I do love 
thee, and thou*who knowest all things knowest that 
I love thee." Peter never denied his Lord after 
that. It is this open recital of love that will estab- 
lish you in the service of the Lord. 

Another lesson is suggested to us by this persist- 
ent knocking of Jesus at the door of our hearts. It 
is the lesson of the patient persistence of God's love. 
A father who was wise in the care of his children 
once overheard an older child say to the youngest in 
a threatening tone, " You must be good, or father 
won't love you." Then the father called him to 
himself, and said, gravely and tenderly, " Do you 
know what you have said ? It is not true, my boy, 
not a bit true; you never made a bigger mistake, my 
son. I don't love you because you are good. There 
are lots of good lads. But I love you just because 
you are my own little son. If you grow up to be- 
come the worst man, I shall love you with a love 
that will break my heart, but I shall love you still. 
I don't love you only when you are good. I love 
you because I cannot help loving you. When you 
are good I love you with a love that makes me glad, 
and when you are not good I love you with a love 
that makes me sad." "Is that it?" said the boy. 



242 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



" Then I will be good, father." God's great love 
for us is like that. We may sin against him, but he 
does not cease loving us. We may turn from him 
eternally, but he still loves us with a love more ten- 
der than a mother knows for her child. Oh, the 
hardness that makes us fight against God's love! 

One of the daughters of Nathaniel Hawthorne 
was fond of inventing and repeating stories. One 
day she told her brother of a very naughty child who 
gradually became naughtier and naughtier, until at 
last, as the culmination of her wickedness, she struck 
God! Alas! how often God is struck! The cruel 
soldiers of Rome struck Jesus with their whips until 
the blood ran down over his shoulders, and the mob 
struck him in the face. But that was a little thing 
compared to the strokes you give him when, with 
all your knowledge of his sacrifice and love, you 
keep him outside through the years, knocking at the 
door of your heart, and will not let him in. 

But perhaps some timid, sensitive soul is feeling 
to-night like this : " I would let Jesus into my heart, 
but I have nothing with which to feed him ; my life 
seems so narrow and so little, my thoughts are so un- 
important, that if Christ were to come to sup at my 
table, I would be ashamed, there would be so little 
there that would please him." O my friend, if that 
is the way you are feeling, you have much yet to 
learn of the goodness and the love of Jesus. 

Mr. Thomas Champness tells of an old lady in 



FATE KNOCKING AT THE DOOR. 243 



England who lived in a lodge on a fine estate. She 
had been in the service of an old countess, but she 
was past work. She was a great favorite with the 
countess and her family, and they came sometimes 
to have tea with her. One day she got a letter say- 
ing, " We are all coming to tea." She was at her 
wits' end. " Oh, dear!" said she, and she went into 
the pantry, where she found a crust of bread, one 
bit of bacon, a spoonful of tea, and one lump of 
sugar. " What shall I do?" she asked. She came 
back and picked up the letter again, and saw at the 
bottom, in brackets, the word " over." She got to 
the window, turned over the letter and saw this : 
" P. S. — We shall send on a man with a basket of 
provisions when we come." " Oh," said she, " you 
are welcome now." That is exactly the state you 
are in when you say, " I would like to be a Chris- 
tian, but I'm afraid I could not hold out. I'm afraid 
it would not last long, and Christ would soon be dis- 
appointed in me." My brother, my sister, Christ 
brings all the provisions along when he comes to sup 
with you. What there is for you to do is to open 
the door of your heart, confess him publicly as your 
guest, let him in ; he will bring the needed faith and 
repentance and pardon; it will all come with Jesus. 
Rise up, and open the door to-night ! 



XXIV. 
The Man who Runs. 



" The hireling fleeth, because he is a hireling." — John 10: 13. 

This is one of those heart-searching declarations 
of Jesus that goes straight home to the roots of the 
matter. It is a striking picture. A sheep owner 
has hired a man to herd his flock of sheep, and so 
long as there is no danger, and no need for him to 
exert himself or risk anything by fidelity, he gets 
along all right; but there comes a day when a big 
mountain wolf comes down out of the higher hills 
toward his flock. Then the test comes. If the 
owner of the sheep had been there, he would have 
fought the wolf off, even at personal risk ; or, if the 
herder had been an honest, faithful man, one who 
did his work in a noble spirit, who cared more for 
the consciousness of having done his work well than 
for the wages he received, he too would have given 
fight to the wolf. But he is not a man of that stripe. 
He is not herding sheep because he likes it, nor be- 
cause he cares anything for his master or for the 
safety of the flock; but solely because he wants the 



THE MAN WHO RUNS. 



245 



wages. And so, when he sees the wolf coming, he 
runs as fast as he can and gets out of the way. Of 
course, the sheep will be scattered, and some of them 
will be mangled, and torn, and devoured ; but what 
is that to him, since his own precious carcass will be 
left whole? 

We may apply this story everywhere. In the es- 
sence, it means this : that a man will run from his 
duty if he is that kind of a man — if he is not doing 
his work, whether it be what men call common 
labor or what they term noble and sacred employ- 
ment, with a high devotion to his master or with 
any noble ideal for his own conduct — he will run 
when he sees the wolf of trial or persecution or 
trouble coming. He will run because he is a hire- 
ling. He will run because he is doing his work sel- 
fishly. 

We may see in our message the tremendous im- 
portance which Jesus attaches to the conversion of 
the soul. He declares that a man must be born 
again out of the old nature of the hireling. The 
man who does not do his work for love's sake, who 
has no keen sense of devotion to God, must be born 
out of this nature into the new nature. Then he 
will feel about God and man and work in the same 
way that Jesus did. You could not run Christ away 
from his duty, because he cared more for pleasing 
God and saving lost men and women than he did 
for any personal comfort. He saw the wolf com- 



246 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



ing, but did not run. He knew that the cruel fangs 
of the wolf would fasten on him and end in his 
death on the cross ; but he went straight toward the 
wolf with a smile on his face. You and I will have 
the courage and heroism to do the same thing when 
we have his nature and spirit. 

It is idle for us to undertake to live the Christian 
life in a worldly spirit. Rev. E. Payson Hammond 
has a little parable about a young wolf, which 
said to his mother, " How I wish, mother, I could 
be a dog. Then I would not go hungry as we 
sometimes do now ; for I have heard that dogs get 
food every day. How can I learn to be a dog?" 

The mother wolf replied, " I will tell you. Go to- 
night to a farmer's house where there are children, 
and do not bark sharply; let the children play with 
you. You will soon forget that you are a wolf." 

When night came, the little wolf crept near to the 
farmer's door. The farmer picked him up, saying, 
" Here is a little wolf I found on the door-step." 

The children all ran to see him, and treated him as 
if he was a puppy dog that had come to stay with 
them. The farmer told his neighbors that he had 
found a young wolf. The children said, " It is a 
beautiful little puppy dog." 

One day the farmer brought a weak lamb into the 
house. The children fed it, and it was soon ready 
to run about and play with them. All the time the 
farmer kept his eye on the young wolf, which was 



THE MAN WHO RUNS. 



247 



now getting pretty large, and the children said, 
" Father, Lupus is almost big enough to take care of 
the sheep!" " Yes," the father said, " but he might 
eat up some of the lambs instead of taking care of 
them." He put the lamb back into the fold. 

That night the young wolf did not sleep well. He 
thought of the weakly lamb in the fold, and he found 
his way to where the sheep and lambs were gath- 
ered; then he sprang over the fence and caught the 
lamb. He killed the poor thing and ate it. He 
dared not go back to his master and to the sweet- 
faced girl who fondled him when he was so small. 
Off in the distance he heard the barking of the 
wolves, and away he ran to join them. After all, he 
had a wolf's nature instead of a dog's, and found 
himself more at home with wolves than with chil- 
dren. 

We have in this simple story an illustration of 
what Christ meant when he spoke about men who 
have an outward appearance that is as docile as a 
lamb, but who are at heart ravening wolves. After 
all, it is the heart that counts. In the great tests of 
life we may be very sure that if the selfish hireling 
spirit is in us we will desert our colors under fire. 

The inner nature will come to the surface under 
provocation. I have heard of a lady who thought 
pigs were very nice if they were kept clean. One 
was given to her. She made a little dress for it, and 
taught it some nice tricks. It used to follow her 



248 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



about, and the boys and girls were glad to see the 
little animal. One day, as she was going past a deep 
mud hole, the pig broke away from her and went 
down into the deep mire. The clean clothes were 
nearly spoiled. She fished the pig out and had him 
washed and dressed again; but his nature was the 
same, and at length she got tired of taking care of 
him in that way. She said, " He is a pig, and never 
will be anything but a pig." 

This story is often illustrated in human life. If 
we are to get rid of the selfishness that makes im- 
possible the doing of noble and splendid things for 
God and humanity, we must have the renewed na- 
ture. Paul understood this when he said that any 
man who was in Christ became a new creature in 
Christ Jesus. That pig, with clean clothes on, was, 
after all, nothing but a pig, and his nature led him to 
the mud-hole; the young wolf, though treated like 
a pet dog and trying to look like one, still had a 
wolfs heart; and while for a time it acted like a dog, 
in the end the wolfish heart had its way. O my 
friends, what are we at the heart? That is the 
great question of life. And it is worth asking, for 
God is able and willing to take the most discourag- 
ing case, and renew our hearts, and give us a new 
spirit. He tells us in Ezekiel, " A new heart also will 
I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: 
and I will take away the stony heart out of your 
flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh/' When a 



THE MAN WHO RUNS. 



249 



man has the new spirit which causes him to look at 
life from the same standpoint as Jesus Christ, he will 
be honest and noble and heroic, just as surely in 
secret or in small matters as he would in the greatest 
deed with the gaze of the whole world upon him. 

The story is told of a butler, serving in the estab- 
lishment of a great earl in Scotland. The butler 
had under his charge a splendid pantry, where all 
things belonging to such a department in a great 
house were stored away when not in use, and where, 
arranged on the shelves, was kept the silverware. 

As the earl was a very observing man, he noticed 
at one time that a wonderful change had taken place 
in the manners and conduct of his butler, which he 
had not been able to account for. 

On a particular occasion, a distinguished noble- 
man, with a few other guests, was dining with the 
earl. Just before finishing the dinner, the noble- 
man, noticing the extraordinary cleanliness and bril- 
liancy of the silver, said to the earl, " Where did you 
ever get such silver ? " 

The earl answered, " It is my butler who has 
given it such unusual polish. He is a strange man. 
Come into the pantry with me and look at my re- 
serve silver." 

They stepped together into the pantry, and the 
butler was there. After the nobleman had admired 
the arrangement, the nicety, and the brightness of 



250 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



the silver vessels, he turned to the butler and asked 
of him, " Why did you take such pains with them ?" 

" Well, sir," said George, " I will tell you. I be- 
came a Christian and joined the church, and I was 
thinking and thinking how I could best please the 
great Master. It occurred to me that I might do it 
by trying every day to do my work better than I 
had ever done it before ; and that is what makes the 
silver so bright and clean." 

There is a very interesting sequel to this story. 
The nobleman who was visiting the earl was a 
friend of Mr. Spurgeon, and when he went to Lon- 
don, he told him of the incident, thinking it a remark- 
able result to be produced by becoming a professed 
follower of Christ. Spurgeon was so greatly inter- 
ested in the story that he sent a trusted friend all 
the way to Scotland to see if he could not persuade 
this butler to come to him in London and be his 
helper in Christian work. The butler came, and 
years afterward Spurgeon bore testimony that this 
man brought more people to Christ, and into his 
tabernacle, than any other of his workers. Spur- 
geon used to call him his " hunter," because he 
exhibited the fidelity, the persistency, and the thor- 
oughness which appear in the successful chase. 

Let us not fail to get the message God would 
teach us by our theme. All of us are shepherds 
in our way. God has given us duties to per- 
form, and ever and anon we shall be tempted to be 



THE MAN WHO RUNS. 



251 



traitors to the work he has entrusted to us. The 
wolf will come. We shall hear his howl on many 
a dark day. We shall see the gleam of his white 
and cruel teeth. What we shall do in such a case 
will depend upon the spirit that controls and mas- 
ters us. If we are only hirelings, and are living 
without any high and lofty confidence, without being 
animated by any reverent devotion to God and lov- 
ing trust in Christ, we shall run in that trying time. 
No man can afford to risk standing in his own 
strength. Peter tried it, and failed shamefully ; but 
when he repented and was forgiven by the Lord 
Jesus Christ, and in the new spirit went forth to his 
noble work, he was as brave as a lion. No wolf 
ever saw his heels again. You and I can conquer 
in the same spirit. 

Down in Texas a middle-aged man was convicted 
of stealing and sent to the penitentiary for a long 
term. After he had received his sentence the sher- 
iff announced that he would take him to the State 
prison on the following morning. At the appointed 
time the sheriff, with a string of convicts handcuffed 
together, was at the station waiting for the train. 
While the crowd sat in the depot a little old woman 
in black, with a face in which the fingers of sorrow 
had pinched great furrows, appeared at the door. 
She looked at the string of prisoners intently, then a 
light of recognition came over her face. She 
stepped up to the group of unfortunates, and laid her 



252 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



hand on the arm of a big, coarse fellow with a heavy 
red moustache. 

The man turned and looked at the little woman. 
" Mother ! " he exclaimed. That was all. Big tears 
came into his eyes. They did not stay there, but 
crowded one another out to chase down the rough 
face, red now with shame. They ran into the big 
moustache, and off the end of it. Then he recov- 
ered himself. The little woman was not crying — 
people sometimes get beyond that. 

"What — are — you — doing — here?" the big man 
sobbed. 

" I came, my son," said the little woman with fur- 
rows in her face, " to see you off." 

" To see me off?" The man was dazed. 

" Yes, Henry. When you were such a little boy 
that you had never been out of the home yard alone, 
I went to the gate with you the first day you ever 
went to the store by yourself. I watched you the 
three blocks of the distance, until your chubby feet 
carried you into the little country store your father 
kept. Then, when you were six, and started for 
school, I went to the gate with you again, and told 
you how to act in the school-room. You went away 
on a visit when you were ten, and I went to the depot 
with you and your uncle, then, and kissed you good- 
bye before the cars started." 

Now the tears were flowing from the big man's 
eyes. 



THE MAN WHO RUNS. 



253 



" Yes," and the little woman sighed a bit. " Then 
you got to be sixteen, and wanted to go to St. Louis. 
It was hard to part with you, but we did it — your 
father and I — and I went to the little depot with 
you and kissed you. You remember, don't you?" 

The other prisoners were interested now, and the 
sheriff took in every word. 

" Then you were married, Henry. I went to see 
you bound by law and God to that sweet, dear Mary, 
who is now — " 

" Don't — don't !" almost shrieked the big man. 

" Yes," the little woman went on, unheeding, 
" and now, you are going away again, and I must 
kiss you. The train is coming, Henry ; kiss your old 
mother." 

The sheriff had not moved. Ordinarily 'he would 
have told the man to move on. But he waited now. 
The big man bowed, and tried to hide his manacled 
hands. 

" Kiss me, Henry," the old lady repeated. The 
head moved lower, and the big red moustache almost 
covered the little face with the furrows on it. 

Then the gang started to the train. As the cars 
began to move, the little woman stood on the plat- 
form. She caught a glimpse of her big son through 
the car window. She waved a little black-bordered 
handkerchief at him. " Good-bye, Henry," she 
called out feebly, and then, through force of habit 



254 



THE KINGS STEWARDS. 



formed when she sent her little son to school, she 
murmured, " Be — be a good boy." 

One of that gang of prisoners said afterward that 
the little scene in the depot was a greater punishment 
to each man there than his respective term of impris- 
onment. What infinite meaning is wrapped up in 
that wonderful declaration of Scripture which says 
that God will comfort us " as one whom his mother 
comforteth." 



XXV. 



The Life is the Light. 

" In him was life; and the life was the light of men." — John 
i: 4. 

Life baffles us in our most profound science. We 
do not know what it is, or how to describe it; but 
there is about it a deep charm. A fine diamond is 
very beautiful, but the healthy imagination, which 
can behold the green field or the yellow waving of 
the harvest stalks, finds still more charm in a grain 
of wheat, for it has life. 

The most wonderful thing said about Jesus Christ 
is that in him was life. That was the glory of his 
personality : He was, and is, the fountain of life. He 
inspired people who came in touch with him. It was 
like coming in contact with an electric battery. It 
refreshed them. It exalted them. It inspired them. 
It gave them a new insight into life, and into them- 
selves. The woman who talked with Jesus at the 
well of Samaria went back to her friends in the little 
town, and said, " Come, see a man which told me 
all things that ever I did." Of course that was an 
exaggeration, and perhaps if she had been called 



256 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



upon to narrate the special things Jesus had said to 
her she would have found it hard work to remember 
them. But she had come in touch with the living 
battery of life. It had thrilled her through and 
through. It resurrected all her sins, and made them 
seem loathsome and horrible. It revived her faint- 
ing soul to believe that goodness was possible to her. 
It lifted her out of the charnel-house of spiritual 
death into which she had been degraded, and set her 
on a plane high enough for the breezes of heaven and 
immortal hope to fan her brow. 

Paul saw Jesus but for a moment on the dusty 
highway at noon, but it was like meeting a lightning 
flash as it pierces its forked way athwart the face of 
a thunder-cloud. It stirred Paul to the center of his 
being. It shocked him out of his self-conceit. It 
electrified him with a vision of the new life of fellow- 
ship with Christ which was possible. And his 
proudest testimony, after many years, when stand- 
ing before King Agrippa, was, " I was not dis- 
obedient unto the heavenly vision." 

Christ stood at the grave of Lazarus with such 
divine vitality that when he said, " Come forth !" the 
dead man arose in his grave-clothes, and came forth. 
But even that is not so great an exhibition of life as 
has been witnessed a thousand times in the story of 
Christ's work in the world. It is spiritual vitality 
which the world needs most. The eloquent W. H. H. 
Murray graphically pictures what we have all 



THE LIFE IS THE LIGHT. 



257 



seen again and again — a man out of whom had gone 
all heavenly resemblance, and in whom all rudeness, 
coarseness, profanity, and worldly lusts were incar- 
nate. There was no pressure that inclined him 
downward to which he did not yield. Had his soul 
been of stone it could not have been less responsive 
to the divine solicitations. There was not a function 
in him which was not petrified on its heavenward 
side. There was not a capacity in him that did not, 
so far as righteous action goes, lie dead. Well, one 
night, while he was lying on his bed, Jesus Christ, 
in the shadow of the darkness — not violently, but 
still as the stillness around and above his bed, more 
dreadful, perhaps, because of the stillness, perhaps 
more gentle because of it — drew near to this dead 
soul, breathed on it once, gently took his hand, and 
said, " Soul, arise !" And that dead soul felt strange 
currents run through all its veins, until the frozen 
current melted, ran, became warm, began to throb, 
and life came into it — life to stand, to move ; and the 
dead soul arose and stood before the Lord, then full 
of rapture bowed down and worshipped. Afterward 
that man lived a life that took knowledge of all God's 
mercies, a life like that of the bird that has no 
beak to pierce and no talons to wound, that never 
claws or strikes and can only sing ; a life like that of 
the little stream that has no deep, dark places in 
it, into which children can fall unaware and be 
drowned, but which runs clear and cool, shallow and 



258 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



safe, content to minister to the roots of flowers that 
fringe it, and to be drunk up by thirsty cattle and 
weary men. What changed this man's life? What 
transformed, illuminated, electrified, revitalized 
him? He had found Christ. He had found the 
fountain of life. He had found him in whom is life, 
and whose life is the light of men. It was the new 
Christ-life in him that made the difference. 

John Newton was a reckless slave-hunting sinner 
when he met Jesus Christ. Almost as suddenly as 
the change came in Paul, he ceased to swear and 
scoff and hunt slaves, and began to pray. Twenty 
years later he was in London, praying and preach- 
ing and overflowing in good works. On Sundays 
he preached to rich bankers and titled ladies. On 
week-day evenings he would sit on a three-legged 
stool in his blue sailor jacket, and open up his rich 
experiences and wise counsels to the poorest and 
most wicked who came to visit him. " I was a wild 
beast on the coast of Africa once," he used to say; 
" but the Lord Jesus caught me and tamed me, and 
now people come to see me as they would go to look 
at the lions in the Tower." What they went to see 
in John Newton was the Christ who had conquered 
him and lived in him. 

Now the great message I wish to impress on our 
hearts is that there is only one real light that counts 
for the world's illumination, and that is the light 
which shines from the inner spiritual life. The 



THE LIFE IS THE LIGHT. 



259 



world burns many superficial candles, but they are 
only poor shams. Christ is the light of the world 
because in him is life. And if you and I are to be — 
as he said we were to be, in our own places — the 
light of the world, we, too, must have that same 
divine life in us. If we have that life in us, we shall 
not even seek to make our light shine; we shall not 
need to worry about it; we shall just go on living 
our natural selves, and, to use Christ's words, " Let 
it shine." 

A gentleman was recently traveling in Switzer- 
land. He had stopped at a great hotel, where many 
titled and wealthy people were at that time guests. 
While he was looking over the company at break- 
fast he noticed two German women. They were 
bent with age, and dressed in quaint, old-fashioned, 
black garments. Their gray hair was neatly brushed 
down to form a sort of curtain on each side of their 
faces, and they wore black silk gloves the fingers of 
which were a little too long. But their faces ! They 
were as much alike as two crab-apples growing on 
the same twig, and their color was also that of small, 
wrinkled, red-cheeked apples. Only a dew-besprin- 
kled apple has ever sparkled so brightly as did the 
eyes of these little old women. Their heads were close 
together, bent over an old-fashioned purse made of 
colored silk and beads, which held coppers at one 
end and more valuable coin at the other. They were 
discussing what fee they could afford to give the 



260 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



waiter, and the traveler could not help overhearing 
the remark, " Oh, but let us give him a franc. The 
coffee was so hot and the rolls so crisp and the but- 
ter so fresh. And as we are having such a good 
time, we might as well make somebody else happy. 
We can spend a little less on our own dinner." A 
little glove came off ; a trembling little hand, with the 
knuckles swollen as if from rheumatism, dipped into 
the beaded purse, and the franc was laid on the table, 
somewhat apart from the money with which the 
breakfast was to be paid for. And as the youthful 
waiter came to gather in his own, two wrinkled, rosy 
faces laughed up at him, and his pourboire was 
handed him with a delight that was pleasant to see. 
Our friend listened to them as one said, " It is four 
hours till the train goes." They were evidently to 
take a slow train, which had a fourth class car, by 
which you travel cheap, and in which there are no 
seats. So they sat, their happy eyes taking in all 
that was going on, and their old hands nervously 
moving. " Just look at the French lady," whispered 
one. " Look at her pearls ; look at her footman. And 
that must be an English lady, reading. How pale 
she looks! Yes, that comes of living in a country 
where there is always a fog. But, oh, how interest- 
ing, how beautiful it all is ! Much more so than one 
might expect from anything we have read about it." 
They snuggled together and whispered awhile, and 
then got up and toddled out, one carrying a leather 



THE LIFE IS THE LIGHT. 



261 



bag on her arm, the other holding a brown paper 
parcel. 

Two hours later our friend stood at a fine point of 
vantage to get a glimpse of the snow-crowned chain 
of Alps which frames the lovely picture of the plain 
of Basle; and up into the silence came two thin 
voices, quivering with age, and the two little women, 
still dressed in rusty black, toiled upwards to where 
he stood. " Yes, here we are," said one, hot, pink, 
and panting; " and O Matilda, O look! those are the 
Alps ! " No painter could portray them as they 
stood there in the morning light, gazing with enrap- 
tured faces upon the white hills far away. They 
folded their small hands instinctively over their old 
shawls, worn in a point after the manner of many 
years ago, and for a long time they never spoke a 
word, but looked and looked. At last one turned to 
our traveler and asked, timidly, if he spoke German ; 
and if so, would he tell them something about the 
mountains. He began to talk with them, pointing 
out the great peaks, and had his reward as one of 
them took her thick handkerchief out and wiped the 
tears from her eyes, and told him they had saved 
for many years in order to come once, for a week, 
to Switzerland, and see the Alps before they died. 
And suddenly, as they stood there, a shaky # little 
voice began to sing an old German hymn, a para- 
phrase of the Psalm, which begins, " I will lift up 
mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my 



262 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



help." Our friend declares that he has heard many 
splendid hymns sung in the region of the Alps, but 
never one like this, that expressed in its thin, un- 
certain wavers the humble gratitude of a poor old 
woman at the fulfillment of the dream of a lifetime. 

And then they were so grateful for his kindness 
that he must lunch with them. Their little sand- 
wiches of grayish bread and their bottle of sugared 
water formed the lunch. But the sauce was more 
delicious than any French chef could have produced. 
The little old women were as happy as children. 
Again and again they exclaimed, " Oh, how good 
God is to let us see all this !" And before they began, 
and after they finished, they folded their hands a 
moment in silent prayer. " If we were million- 
aires," one of them said, " we could not be better 
off." 

Our friend went to see them off in the fourth-class 
carriage that afternoon. He bought at the flower- 
stand a little bunch of gentians, and pinned them on 
their rusty shawls. The dear old souls were full of 
wonder and delight. They said, " It is like Para- 
dise, and may God bless you for all your kindness to 
us." And the train carried them away. 

Now what was it that made them different from 
the grumbling, discontented, fretful people one meets 
so often in travel ? It was the life that was in them. 
In them was life, and the life was the light that illu- 
minated conversation and face and spirit, and gave 



THE LIFE IS THE LIGHT. 



263 



them the beauty and glory of heaven. All the earth 
would be God's paradise if men and women every- 
where had that same life in them. 

A Hindu trader in Kherwara market once asked 
Pema, " What medicine do you put on your face to 
make it shine so?" 

Pema answered, " I don't put anything on." 

" No, but what do you put on?" 

" Nothing. I don't put anything on." 

" Yes, you do. All you Christians do. I have 
seen it in Agra, and I have seen it in Ahmedabad and 
Surat, and I have seen it in Bombay." 

Pema laughed, and his happy face shone the more 
as he said, " Yes, I'll tell you the medicine : it is hap- 
piness of heart." 

Brothers, we have no right to go the way of life 
bearing Christ's name without the Christ-light in our 
faces, without the Christ-spirit in our deeds, without 
the Christ-charm in the atmosphere that breathes 
forth from our daily lives. This life is for us. It 
is possible to every one of us. We have only to open 
our hearts that Christ may come in and dwell there. 
We have only to abandon ourselves completely to be 
the temple of God, and Christ will live in us. Then 
we shall know what he meant when he said, " Be- 
cause I live, ye shall live also." 



XXVI. 



God's Doorkeeper. 

" I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than 
to dwell in the tents of wickedness." — Psalm 84: 10. 

The supreme delusion into which the devil leads 
men is to make them believe that the results of wick- 
edness form a more substantial and reliable basis 
than righteousness for the every-day experiences of 
practical life. How common it is, when you urge 
upon a worldly man the righteousness of a great 
cause which is before the people, to have him say, 
" Oh yes, that is all very well in theory ; as a matter 
of abstract principle I will admit that you are right. 
But for this practical, rough-and-tumble life of ours, 
one must be satisfied with something a little less fine 
than that." Now the devil has the man by the 
throat whenever he is ready to assert that 
righteousness of conduct is too good for every-day 
wear, and that in the trying experiences of life the 
shady, time-serving policies of iniquity will do the 
better service. 

The Psalmist has it right when he says that wick- 
edness lives in a tent, but God and righteousness live 



GOD'S DOORKEEPER. 



265 



in a solid house. And he declares that he would 
rather be a doorkeeper in God's house than to dwell 
as a guest, or as the master, in the tents of wicked- 
ness. Put the emphasis on this fact in all your think- 
ing about this subject — that every wicked man or 
sinful woman in the world is living in a fragile tent 
that is liable to be torn with the wind at any time, 
and is certain to be finally desolated and destroyed. 
Some people seem to think that a man can afford to 
get wealth at any price, and that plenty of money 
insures happiness. And despite all the tragedies of 
wealthy sinners constantly going on before our eyes, 
showing that the path of the transgressor is just as 
hard to the rich man as to the poor man, Satan con- 
stantly palms off that falsehood on the youth of our 
time. But nothing could be farther from the truth. 
The rich man may live in a silk tent and the poor 
man in one made of rude canvas, but the harsh winds 
of remorse or judgment will tear the one as quickly 
as the other. A millionaire died the other day in 
New York city. He had had an abundance of 
wealth all his life. He had dwelt at the most fash- 
ionable hotels and had known everything that travel 
under luxurious conditions and a luxurious life at 
home could possibly bring to him in a worldly or 
physical way. He was a man of some intellectuality 
also, and had been able to surround himself with 
many of those things that are supposed to please the 
intelligent mind. Yet, when he came to die, these 



266 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



were his dying words : " I have never known happi- 
ness." A citizen of another city slew his fellow 
man, and his home was wrapped in sorrow and 
gloom, his life was blighted and desolate, and all his 
riches and all the luxurious appointments which his 
money could buy had no power to bring peace. Be- 
lieve me, the Psalmist was right ; sin is a fragile tent 
which will not stand the winds of life. 

But, thank God, something is secure. He who 
dwells with God lives in a house with solid founda- 
tions. I do not blame the Psalmist for preferring a 
position as a doorkeeper there to being master of a 
tent of wickedness that is certain to go down before 
that storm which shall beat all sin to the earth. 

Let us study for a little the suggestions that may 
come to us from this expression/' A doorkeeper in the 
house of my God." In the large sense, the house of 
God is the temple of righteousness and of goodness. 
A man is brought into the house of God when he for- 
sakes the frail tent of his sins and through repent- 
ance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ finds for- 
giveness and enters into peace. Any man who by 
his devotion to God, his love for humanity, his self- 
denying earnestness of spirit, is able to lead another 
out of sorrow, or doubt or ignorance or sin and 
bring him into the light, where he shall see God 
aright and come into harmony with him, is in deed 
and in truth a doorkeeper in the house of his God. 

I was reading the other day a story in one of our 



GOD'S DOORKEEPER. 



267 



recent magazines, which gave a little biographical 
sketch of a young physician. He had been in a med- 
ical school where there was in the faculty one man, 
named Alden, who was full of enthusiasm and noble 
ideals in regard to the splendid opportunities for ser- 
vice and helpfulness which are before the young 
physician. He was a magnetic man, and, believing 
in his message with all his heart, he caught the imag- 
ination of every true young man in the class, and 
inspired him with something of his own nobility of 
character. The young doctor in question had been a 
receptive nature for this noble man to work upon; 
and he had gone out from the college to the work of 
his life, with the highest ideals and with the noblest 
purpose to fulfill them in the work of his career. 
Like many another young professional man, he had 
his starving period, and it continued for a good 
while; his clothes got seedy, and the slow waiting 
day after day wore upon him in every way. In the 
midst of all this a successful humbug — who was a 
disgrace to the very name of doctor, but who was 
getting rich with a new fad — desiring the weight of 
this young man's honorable name, offered him a 
partnership and a guarantee of several thousand dol- 
lars a year from the start. It was a terrible tempta- 
tion. It was the same old temptation that Jesus 
knew when, in his hunger, the devil said to him, 
" Command that these stones be made bread." The 
discouraged and despairing young physician was ter- 



268 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



ribly shaken, and felt within him the cruel pressure 
of the evil temptation; but just then there came to 
his mind a vision of his old professor in the school. 
He saw again that glowing face, and seemed to hear 
the ring of his voice as he urged his students to be 
true to their noble vocation. " No !" he thundered 
to the proposition of the tempter. And as he walked 
away, he said aloud to himself, " O Alden ! That 
was a noble leaven that you put into my life. It will 
not let me go to the bad, even when I want to." 
Who will say that that medical Professor was not 
God's doorkeeper? 

Many a teacher in the public school and in the 
college has the same precious opportunity, and 
many seize upon it with wonderful skill. Dr. Al- 
bert S. Hunt, for so many years the Agent of the 
American Bible Society, was in his early years an 
instructor in the Wesleyan University at Middle- 
town, Connecticut. And during those years scores 
of young men, some of them among the grandest 
workers for God and humanity in the world, were 
led into the house of God by this young teacher-door- 
keeper. Bishop Foss says that Dr. Hunt watched his 
chance with him, and then, seizing hold at the proper 
time, in a few moments led him to give his heart to 
Christ. " And," says the grateful Bishop, " when I 
get to heaven I will tell the wondering angels, who 
never had such an experience, what Albert S. Hunt 
did for me that day." 



GOD'S DOORKEEPER. 



269 



The opportunity to be God's doorkeeper is always 
at hand when we live in that attitude toward God 
and toward our fellow men. In the recent biogra- 
phy of Bishop Phillips Brooks there is this sweet 
little story : A poor woman, whose business it was to 
scrub the floors of Trinity Church, came to him 
about the marriage of her daughter, asking the use of 
the chapel. " Why not take the church ? " " But that 
is not for the likes of me/' " Oh, yes, it is for the 
likes of you, and the likes of me, and the likes of 
every one. The rich people, when they get married, 
want to fling their money about ; but that is not nec- 
essary to be married in Trinity Church." And so 
the marriage took place in Trinity Church, and the 
great organ was played as if it were the wedding of 
a daughter of the rich. Ah, it was such deeds as 
that, and it was the spirit that prompted such deeds 
as that, that made Phillips Brooks one of the great- 
est doorkeepers for God in all New England in his 
day. 

The opportunities are infinite ; it is only the spirit 
and the will that are lacking, when we fail to be the 
doorkeeper of God to our brethren. Not long since 
a certain business man, living in one of our large 
cities, had in his employ a young man who was away 
from home and had been away just long enough to 
get very lonely and homesick. As he came out of 
church on a pleasant Sunday morning a rather fast 
young man whom he had met in business said to 



270 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



him, " John, you're a stranger. Come with me out 

to Beach. The nice young men all go there. 

You can read or play games, whatever you like. And 
there you will hear some of the finest singing in the 
city." 

John hesitated, and was just saying, tremblingly, 
" I — I think I will go," when a kindly hand was 
placed on his shoulder. 

" Come home with us to dinner," said his 
employer. 

John hesitated. The temptation to go away for 
the Sunday dissipation was great. Then his 
mother's face seemed to come before him, a sweet 
face from heaven it was, too. 

He excused himself to his young acquaintance 
and said to his employer, " Mr. Irwin, I will go with 
you, and I thank you for your kind invitation." 

A few weeks later Mr. and Mrs. Irwin received a 
letter from John's home. " I want to thank you," 
they read, " for your kindness to my boy. His own 
mother is dead, but I am trying to fill her place. John 
wrote me how he was on the point of going to one of 
your fashionable resorts, and how your kind invita- 
tion saved him. He says he thinks that was the 
turning-point in his life. May God bless you ! " 

Mr. Irwin read and re-read the letter, then very 
tenderly folded it and put it away with a " keepsake" 
letter he had once received from his own mother. 

" Frank," said his wife, " we did not know that 



GOD'S DOORKEEPER. 



271 



our invitation to dinner that Sunday meant all that 
to John." 

" No/' replied the man of business, " but I think 
God knew." That couple were God's doorkeepers 
that day, though they knew it not; and not a day 
passes but every one of us has some opportunity, and 
sometimes many opportunities, to be a doorkeeper 
for the Lord. 

If we are to be God's doorkeepers there are some 
simple things we ought to cultivate. I have often 
noticed what a difference there is in doorkeepers. 
Some doorkeepers have such harsh and forbidding 
faces that they give you the impression they are 
there not to let people in, but to keep them out. The 
face is hateful and the voice harsh. Again, there 
are other doorkeepers with voice so kind and gentle, 
and smiles so full of sympathy and welcome, that one 
would be tempted to go out of his way to be let in by 
such a keeper of the door. Let us remember that 
God does not need us to be watch-dogs, to keep peo- 
ple out of his house; we must be doorkeepers of a 
nobler sort ; we must be the kind of doorkeepers that 
make people want to come in. In order to do that, 
we need to cultivate a kind voice. It is possible to 
say nice things in a voice that robs them of nearly, if 
not quite, all their beauty. Some one has well said 
that there is no power of love so hard to keep as a 
kind voice; it is hard to get it and to keep it in the 
right tone. One needs to start in youth and be on the 



272 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



watch night and day to get and keep a voice which 
shall speak at all times the thought of a kind heart. 
How important this is in the home and in schools 
where little children are ; for the tone is always more 
than the word to a little child. If we are to be 
God's doorkeepers to little children, then be sure that 
something of the gentleness of heaven must creep 
into our voices and mellow our tones when we speak 
to them. 

We ought to get sweeter and more beautiful as 
doorkeepers for God as we get older. Oliver Wen- 
dell Holmes, in his " Autocrat of the Breakfast 
Table," calls attention to the fact that a violin, when 
new, does not give out the sweetness of tone that 
comes from it when its several parts have been to- 
gether many years. It ought to be that way with us. 
As life passes on, instead of yielding to the little 
aches and infirmities of the flesh, and becoming sour 
and peevish and cross, we ought — and, blessed be 
God ! in his divine economy we can by his grace al- 
ways do what we ought — to become more patient 
and forbearing and gentle, and better adapted in 
every way to be charming and sympathetic doorkeep- 
ers to the house of God. As the goodness of God 
piles up an accumulated garner of mercies for many 
years, our own dispositions should grow sweeter. 
One of the loveliest things ever written about Queen 
Victoria is in the recently published diary of the 
Duchess of Teck, which contains this remarkable 



GOD'S DOORKEEPER. 



273 



quotation from the Queen : " God has been so good 
to me that now, in my old age, I want to confess that 
I have not any dislikes." May the goodness, the 
gentleness, of God to us work the same blessed result 
in all our hearts! 



XXVII. 



The Child and the Serpent. 

" And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and 
between thy seed and her seed ; it shall bruise thy head, and 
thou shalt bruise his heel." — Genesis 3 : 15. 

Sunshine and shadow chase each other in the 
Bible, as they do in real life. In the same chapter, 
and, indeed, in the same paragraph which tells of 
man's doom and loss because of sin, we have the 
promise of the struggle for his salvation. One can 
lose in a moment what it may take a long time to re- 
gain. John Muir tells how he once climbed all day 
long to get to the top of a mountain canon after a 
California storm, and just as he reached the brow of 
the mountain he started an avalanche that in less 
than two minutes swept him back over all the space 
he had climbed. The struggles of civilization and 
human improvement in all quarters of the earth are 
a part of that long fight with the serpent which be- 
gan with the annunciation of this text. God is seek- 
ing to build up character in us. Sometimes we are 
tempted to think that the improvement in mechanical 



THE CHILD AND THE SERPENT. 



275 



inventions, and the increasing power over nature be- 
cause of them, are taking away the value of individu- 
ality in men. But in the war between Spain and the 
United States we had abundant illustration of the 
mistake of this idea. Personal character never 
counted for more than now. 

An English writer, recording the destruction of 
Cervera's fleet off Santiago, declares it was one of 
the most extraordinary sea fights in history. He says 
that the fleets were not so very unevenly matched. 
The Spaniards were a fast, well-found lot, of modern 
construction, and heavily armed. Yet they did no 
damage to speak of. In the fleet were two torpedo 
destroyers, very fast, very modern, very destructive 
boats. Yet both these were sunk by a converted 
pleasure yacht. It was all strangely inexplicable, a 
complete puzzle to scientific experts. But there is 
one element, says this critic, in naval warfare, which 
these experts had failed to reckon in their calcula- 
tions, and that unreckoned element won the battle of 
Santiago — the men. With all the changes that 
science has introduced into warfare, people were 
beginning to think that the men did not count. But 
the Spanish-American war taught us that the indi- 
vidual man counts for more than he ever did before. 
The one thing the Spanish navy lacked was men. 
They had good ships and good guns, but that priest- 
ridden, bull-fighting race, loaded down with igno- 
rance and superstition, in a land without Bibles and 



276 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



free schools, has ceased to produce, if it ever did 
produce, the sturdy sons that America boasts. That, 
and that only, declares this English critic, explains 
Santiago; and I do not doubt that he is right. 

In our time, when people do business in multi- 
tudes, when the air is full of talk about trusts and 
corporations and unions and leagues, it is easy to lose 
sight of the great importance of individual char- 
acter; but that is really the only greatly important 
thing about us. No polish, no culture, no wealth, no 
seeming success, can take the place of a strong, noble, 
pure manhood. And no lack of these things, so de- 
sirable as accessories and environment, can rob real 
character of its triumph. 

James Russell Lowell brings this out in a descrip- 
tion of one of Emerson's addresses, to which he had 
been listening. He said of it, a few days later, 
" Emerson's oration was more disjointed than usual, 
even with him. It began nowhere, and ended every- 
where; and yet, as always, with that divine man, it 
left you feeling that something beautiful had passed 
that way, something more beautiful than anything 
else, like the rising and setting of stars. Every pos- 
sible criticism might have been made on it, except 
that it was not noble. There was a tone in it that 
awakened all elevating associations. He hesitated, 
he lost his place, he had to put on his glasses ; but it 
was as if a creature from some fairer world had lost 
his way in our fogs, and it was our fault and not 



THE CHILD AND THE SERPENT. 



277 



his. It was chaotic, but it was all such stuff as stars 
are made of. You could not help feeling that if 
you waited a while, all that was nebulous would be 
hurled into planets, and would assume the mathe- 
matical gravity of system. All through it, I felt 
something in me that cried, * Ha, ha !' to the sound 
of trumpets." What a beautiful tribute to the 
strength and beauty of a great soul ! A noble, pure 
man, whose personality was greater than his mes- 
sage. 

God is seeking to build up a great character in each 
one of us. He has put enmity between us and 
the evil one. Jesus Christ, who came as our cham- 
pion, and whose " heel" was wounded in his cruci- 
fixion and death on our behalf, has the power to 
bruise the " head" of the serpent who seeks our 
overthrow and destruction. Satan is a defeated 
enemy to all those who fight under the leadership 
of Jesus Christ. 

In which army do you count yourself? This en- 
mity between the spirit of Christ and the spirit of 
evil is everywhere dividing men and women asunder, 
and. Christ tells us that no one can be neutral in this 
war. We are either for him or against him. He is 
making his appeal to the chivalry of the race, asking 
us to become good soldiers for his cause. 

An interesting story is told of Johann Nass, who 
preached the Gospel to the people of Germantown, 
Pennsylvania, over a hundred and fifty years ago. In 



278 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



those troublous times his life was an eventful one. 
On one occasion he was traveling and preaching in 
the Fatherland. It was at the time when the caprice 
of Emperor Frederick William for a regiment com- 
posed of giants had obtained world-wide renown. 
No expense in money, fraud, or intrigue was spared 
to obtain gigantic men. Johann Nass was a veri- 
table Saul, standing head and shoulders above his fel- 
lows. The king's officers asked him to become a sol- 
dier. This he firmly refused to do, as he felt called 
to preach the Gospel. They proceeded to torture 
him, but without any effect. As a last resort, they 
took him before the king. 

" Sire," said the captain, " this man absolutely re- 
fuses to enlist in your service. We have brought 
him in to you to dispose of according to the will of 
your Majesty." 

The king scrutinized the prisoner very closely, 
then, addressing him, said : " You would make a 
very desirable soldier. Tell me why you will not 
enlist?" 

" Craving forgiveness of your Majesty," was the 
reply, " I have long ago placed my name upon the 
noblest and best of enrollments, and I would not — 
indeed, could not — become a traitor to Him. There- 
fore, I cannot enter thy service." 

" To whom do you belong ? Who is your cap- 
tain?" queried the astonished king. 

" My captain," said he, " is the great Prince Em- 



THE CHILD AND THE SERPENT. 



279 



manuel, our Lord Jesus Christ. I have espoused his 
cause, and, your Majesty, I cannot and will not for- 
sake him." 

" Neither will I that you shall forsake him," 
answered the king. 

Being thus dismissed in safety, the historian says, 
" Johann Nass was exceeding glad, and preached 
mightily in those parts." 

That is the spirit of fidelity which tells for Christ 
to-day. Such soldiers of Christ laugh at difficulties 
and find joy in the midst of the severest trials. Those 
to whom the Christian life is heavy and chafing are 
those who do not abandon themselves in complete 
self-sacrifice to the fight against sin. It is the half- 
hearted soldier who is never happy. An undivided 
loyalty feeds its own courage from inexhaustible re- 
sources. 

Some are not conscious of this great struggle 
which is going on between good and evil because 
they have given up the fight and are led captive by 
the evil one. They do not appreciate the fearful loss 
which sin is entailing upon them. How many times 
I have seen men and women who had gone on indif- 
ferent to Christ and to his appeal for their love and 
support, until some sudden ravage of sin brought 
them into such open sorrow and terror that it was as 
if a precipice had yawned at their feet. But the prec- 
ipice was there all the time, though they knew it not. 
The New Testament speaks of being " convicted of 



280 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



sin," which means a time when the Holy Spirit 
arouses a man to the consciousness of the power 
which Satan has come to have over him and awakens 
him to an appreciation of the misery and doom which 
sin will certainly bring upon the soul. But many are 
losing the battle of life without knowing it. 

There is a little story of a mother who had only 
one child, a son, and who lost him through an acci- 
dent by drowning when he was seventeen. His body 
was washed out to sea and was never recovered. 
She very much wanted a portrait of him, and she 
called upon a famous artist, who was a friend of the 
family, to reproduce the boy's face and form. He 
asked for every photograph she had of her son, from 
babyhood onward. 

When the painting arrived it represented a glade 
in the woods. Playing about were five little chil- 
dren of various ages, but all the same boy, as his 
mother had known him. Coming down the center, 
joyous, gay, was the seventeen-year-old lad, leading 
by the hand his baby self of one year. 

The mother looked at the picture, and suddenly 
burst into tears. " I have lost seven sons !" she said. 

" You had lost six of them before your son died," 
the artist replied. And yet that loss the mother had 
never felt, though it was such a loss as could never 
be made good. 

But are there not some who hear me who are los- 
ing daily the most priceless treasure? If you run 



THE CHILD AND THE SERPENT. 



281 



back in your memory, you will recall yourself when 
your heart was tender and sympathetic toward 
Christ, and when your conscience was sensitive to 
the slightest touch of evil. But, little by little, as 
you have yielded to temptations to sin, your con- 
science has hardened, and your indifference, your 
selfishness, your sin, have separated between you 
and God. You are like a man who sleeps at his post 
while the receding tide drifts him ever farther 
out to sea. Would to God I had the power to 
arouse you to see your danger before it is too late ! 

Some men and women cling to the lower life of 
the flesh because sin has wounded them in their affec- 
tions and appetites until pure and holy things do 
not attract them. 

There is an old fable of the swan, which is a sacred 
bird in India. The fable runs that one of these birds 
came down to the shore one day, where a crane was 
feeding. This bird had never seen a swan before, 
and asked him where he came from. " I came from 
heaven," said the swan. Said the crane, " I never 
heard of such a place. Where is it?" " Far away ; 
far better than this place," said the swan. The old 
crane listened to the swan, and at last said, " Are 
there snails there?" The swan drew itself up with 
indignation. " Well," said the crane, " you can 
have your heaven then. I want snails." 

There is much truth wrapped up in that fable. 
One man says, " Heaven may be glorious, but is 



282 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



there whisky there? Then, I'll have the whisky 
and let the heaven go." Others say, " Is there gam- 
bling there? Are there pleasures of the flesh there? 
We want snails." But when men and women see 
with clear eyes the beauty of the Christian life, and 
turn to Christ with repentance and faith, they lose 
the crane nature and get the swan nature, and imme- 
diately develop a taste and an appetite for heavenly 
things, so that instead of having to give up a great 
deal for Christ, they find that becoming a Christian 
is leaving poverty to enter upon great riches of en- 
joyment. As Paul said, the man who accepts Christ 
finds that " Old things are passed away; behold, all 
things are become new." Let Christ bruise the head 
of the serpent in your nature, and you will get the 
victory over evil longings and desires. Nothing is 
sadder than to see people living such poor lives when 
their own consciences tell them they ought to live so 
much grander and nobler lives in every way. 

A gentleman came out of a hotel, recently, whist- 
ling quite low. A little boy playing in the yard 
heard him, and said: " Is that the best you can 
whistle?" "No," said the gentleman. "Can you 
beat it?" The boy replied that he could, and the 
gentleman said, "Well, let's hear you." The little 
fellow began to whistle, and then insisted that the 
man should try again. He did so, and the boy 
acknowledged that it was good whistling; but as 
he started away, the little fellow cried, " Well, if 



THE CHILD AND THE SERPENT. 283 



you can whistle better, what were you whistling 
that way for?" 

My friends, you whom God calls to live the life of 
the Son of God, why not do it ? Why live a life so 
utterly unsatisfactory to yourselves, so far below 
your possibilities, so far below the splendid ideal 
which is set before you ? If you will rouse up now 
to live this higher life all the power of heaven is 
yours for the asking. 



XXVIII. 



A King who Played the Fool. 

" Behold, I have played the fool, and have erred exceed- 
ingly." — I Samuel 26: 21. 

On the slope of Mount Hachilah, in the wilderness 
of Ziph, far down near the bottom of the canon, 
the army of King Saul had camped. Three thou- 
sand soldiers were sleeping in their tents, while near 
the center of the encampment, with the wagons 
drawn up and walled about them for an additional 
protection, lay King Saul, and Abner, his chief gen- 
eral. Their force was so much superior to that of 
David, for whom they were searching, that they did 
not even take the precaution to set a watch, but, after 
a long day's march, wearied out with the rough 
travel through the wilderness, they all slept, from the 
king down to the teamsters. 

Now David was a man not easy to be caught nap- 
ping, and he did not permit the army of Saul to come 
• into his wilderness without his knowing it. His spies 
and scouts were always on the alert. Before Saul 
came into the forest in which David was hiding the 
young soldier-poet was warned of his approach by 



A KING WHO PLAYED THE FOOL. 



285 



his faithful friends. On the night of the camp at 
Hachilah, David determined to do a little scouting 
on his own account. He took two trusted friends 
with him, Ahimelech and Abishai. They came to 
a spot where they could look down on the camp 
of his sleeping enemy, and viewed the scene with 
great interest. From their vantage ground, with 
the clear light of the moon and stars falling from the 
Eastern sky, David saw Saul and Abner fast asleep. 
He could even see Saul's spear stuck in the ground 
beside the bolster on which his head rested. Abishai, 
a brave and valiant fellow, and a man who loved his 
chief with all his heart, tried to persuade David that 
this was a providential opportunity to get rid of 
Saul. Said he, " God hath delivered thine enemy 
into thy hand this day; now therefore let me smite 
him, I pray thee, with the spear even to the earth at 
once, and I will not smite him the second time." But 
David would not agree to this. He said, " Destroy 
him not ; for who can stretch forth his hand against 
the Lord's anointed, and be guiltless? The Lord 
shall smite him; or his day shall come to die; or he 
shall descend into battle, and perish. The Lord for- 
bid that I should stretch forth my hand against the 
Lord's anointed." 

But as David looked on the sleeping camp the 
dare-devil instinct of the young soldier possessed him 
and he said to Abishai, " Take thou now the spear 
that is at his bolster, and the cruse of water." The 



286 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



people in that country drink an enormous amount 
of water, and to this day the Arab traveler goes to 
bed with a cruse of water standing by his bolster, 
so that if he wakes in the night he may refresh him- 
self. And so Saul had a large cruse of water at his 
head. David and Abishai, taking their lives in their 
hands, slipped stealthily into the camp, and up to 
Saul's head, and took the spear and the cruse of 
water from Saul's bolster, and got away out of the 
camp without awakening anybody. They climbed 
back on to the hill on the other side of the canon 
from Saul's army; and when they were far enough 
away to elude pursuit easily, knowing well the wil- 
derness, which was unknown to Saul and his fol- 
lowers, they began to shout and make a great noise, 
and soon aroused Saul and his army. Then David, 
standing on the hill-top, cried out to General Abner, 
who rose up sleepily, and looked anxiously about to 
see if they were attacked. Finally, when sufficiently 
awake, Abner shouted back to David and said, 
" Who art thou that criest to the king? " 

And David, willing to have some fun out of Ab- 
ner, replied in a taunting way, " Art not thou a val- 
iant man ! and who is like to thee in Israel ! wherefore 
then hast thou not kept thy lord the king ? for there 
came one of the people in to destroy the king thy 
lord. This thing is not good that thou hast done. 
As the Lord liveth, ye are worthy to die, because ye 
have not kept your master, the Lord's anointed. And 



A KING WHO PLAYED THE FOOL. 



287 



now see where the king's spear is, and the cruse of 
water that was at his bolster." 

We do not know what Abner said. Perhaps he 
did not think of anything appropriate to say, and so 
kept silent. At any rate, King Saul was aroused by 
this time, and detected the voice of David. He was 
greatly touched at the mercy of David in sparing his 
life. Something of Saul's better manhood came up 
for the moment, and he cried aloud, " Is this thy 
voice, my son David? " And David said, " It is my 
voice, my lord, O king." 

Then David, standing on that vantage ground at 
the top of the hill, began to reason with Saul, and 
inquired the reason for his being hunted as though 
he was some foul thing. He begged to know what 
Saul had against him. He demanded that Saul 
should tell him what wrong he had committed, or 
what evil had been discovered against him. David 
assured Saul that if it was the Lord that had stirred 
him up to this action, then he was ready to repent 
and make an offering; but if evil men had done it, 
then they were an accursed lot, and unworthy of 
such an influence over Saul. And he furthermore 
assures Saul that he might as well try to seek a flea 
in the field, or a lone partridge in the mountain, as to 
try to hunt him out from his hiding-place in such a 
wilderness. Besides, it was small business for the 
king and his army to thus be hunting down his 
friend. 



288 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



The words of David had a remarkable effect upon 
Saul. Suddenly, he seems to have had a glimpse of 
the folly and wickedness of his course toward him. 
All the sophistries and excuses which he had been 
making to his own conscience were cleared away by 
David's words. As the fog is sometimes driven away 
by the wind, and the sun which has been hidden 
shines forth in all its fulness, so David's words, like 
a breath from the pines, drove away the mists of 
envy and jealousy, and the hideousness of his sin 
and folly shone out clear. Saul cried aloud, I have 
no doubt with perfect sincerity, " I have sinned : re- 
turn, my son David ; for I will no more do thee harm, 
because my soul was precious in thine eyes this day : 
behold, I have played the fool, and have erred ex- 
ceedingly." 

There are two or three things in this story worth 
noting seriously. The first has relation to David. 
Here is a splendid vision of the greatness of David's 
character. W e must remember that this was a long 
time before Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans, 
" Recompense to no man evil for evil," or, " Avenge 
not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: 
for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, 
saith the Lord." There is something glorious in 
this young exile, wronged and abused on every side, 
hunted like a wild beast for no wrong of his own, 
who yet spurns to do a mean and wicked thing in 
order to advance his own interests. He will not take 



A KING WHO PLAYED THE FOOL. 289 

the life of Saul, even when Saul is hunting him to 
destroy him. No doubt if it had been a straight- 
out fight in self-defence he would have felt justified 
in taking Saul's life; but so long as he could hide 
himself, he would not do it. Saul had been anointed 
of God to be king, and David did not propose to take 
the reins into his own hands. Like a wise philoso- 
pher he reasoned, " Saul's time will come to die, and 
God in his own time will end his career ; it is not for 
me to do it." 

The folly of envy has no stronger illustration than 
in this story of Saul in his campaign against David. 
Saul had at first greatly loved David. It would have 
been very hard to keep from loving him. David was 
a most lovable man. He was young and the very 
picture of health; and while he was a heroic and 
daring soldier, who never feared the face of a foe, 
there was about him the rare genius of music, not 
only in melody of heart, but in the most generous 
gifts of mind. David could play on a harp until a 
man half mad would be charmed out of his melan- 
choly and see life with hopeful eyes. It is impos- 
sible to doubt that the conversation of this young 
poet, who was really one of the greatest poets that 
has ever lived, was charming and delightful. And 
so Saul had loved David until jealousy and envy had 
been sown, like dragon's teeth, in his soul. David's 
popularity with the people, and Saul's personal con- 
sciousness that he had not pleased God, aroused in 



290 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



Saul the fear that David was to become king in his 
place. So the silly man thought he would thwart 
God by killing David. What folly to think that it 
would make his case any better if David's condition 
were worse! He did not take into consideration 
that he must stand or fall on his own merits. 

Some of you may need just this message, for jeal- 
ousy and envy have not yet died out of the earth. 
Remember that their folly is just as great now as it 
was in the days of Saul. You will never help your- 
self by pulling down somebody else. If your com- 
petitor were as bad as your jealous fancy would 
paint him, that would not make you one whit better. 
It is only by building up our own character into gen- 
uine greatness that we can permanently advance 
ourselves. And to allow jealousy and envy of an- 
other's success to make us sour and bitter in our 
spirit is not only the greatest folly but a great sin. 

We see in this story that sin will often set a smart 
man to playing the fool. Now, Saul was by nature 
anything but a fool. He was a bright, strong man 
and might have had a great and splendid career as 
king. He did no foolish things until he rebelled 
against God. It was sin that put him in the fool's 
part, and how many times sin has done that! All 
history is full of the story of bright, wise men and 
women who so long as they were doing right pos- 
sessed a judgment that could be relied upon without 
question ; but when once they had yielded to sin the 



A KING WHO PLAYED THE FOOL. 



291 



devil put them to playing the fool. The best brains 
have become weak and silly in playing the part of 
drunkenness. The strongest men in intellect have 
gone the foolish path of the gambler or the silly way 
of the libertine. As a little foreign attraction which 
makes the needle untrue in the sailor's compass may 
drive him upon the rocks, so a little rotten spot of 
sin in a man's heart may turn his whole life out of 
the channel of wisdom and safety and break him in 
pieces on the reef. 

It is well worth while to note that there is no 
safety in the mere knowledge that you are playing 
the fool. I have no doubt that Saul was entirely 
honest in what he said to David at that time, and 
yet David knew better than to trust him. While he 
believed that for the moment Saul meant what he 
said, he was also convinced that there was no genu- 
ine and sincere repentance in Saul's heart. On the 
next occasion that stirred up his jealousy he would 
seek his life as cruelly and wickedly as ever. So the 
fact that you see your sin and catch a glimpse of the 
folly of it, is no evidence that you will be saved from 
it. That lightning-like glimpse of sin which God 
gives men every now and then, even the worst of 
them, is God's call to them; but unless they act on 
it, and repent of their sins and turn from them, it will 
amount to nothing. 

The only way to utilize such a vision of self is 
to follow the example of the Prodigal whom Jesus 



292 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



tells us about in his wonderful story. The Prodigal 
had played the fool, too; he played the fool until 
he was played out completely, and one day, at his 
lunch of husks among the greedy hogs, there came 
to him a glimpse of himself such as Saul caught that 
night in the wilderness camp, and he, too, cried out, 
" I have sinned ; I have played the fool, and erred 
exceedingly." Now if the Prodigal had stopped 
there, simply meditating on that humiliating fact, 
he would have herded hogs to the last chapter of the 
story. But he went farther ; he said, " I have only 
been playing the fool. Thank God, I wasn't born a 
fool! And I don't need to continue in the fool's 
part ! I will quit the job right now. I will arise and 
go to my father, and I will make a clean breast of it. 
It is a good deal better to be a good, honest servant 
in my father's house than to be playing the part of a 
fool on the devil's stage." And he arose and went 
to his father. 

Which one of these men will you imitate? Saul 
saw his folly, but went on deeper and deeper into sin 
until he died a horrible death in despair. The Prod- 
igal saw his folly and turned away from it in re- 
pentance and went home to music and feasting and 
welcome. Which path will you take ? 



XXIX. 



The Romance of a Word. 

" Nevertheless." — Exodus 32: 34. 

Many words have character. They are more than 
words; they are pictures. There are some words 
that blossom like flowers in the garden, others that 
grow green on the hillside, and still others that clap 
their hands in the tree-tops. There are words full of 
laughter, which come singing through the air as 
from merry lips. Whenever you read them or hear 
them, you see scattered sunshine sprinkled through 
green boughs and listen to running water. There 
are words that are beautiful, and words that are 
sacred. There are words a man cannot speak in 
anger ; words that soften the harshest voice and mel- 
low the sternest heart. There are ugly words that 
when heard or spoken make one feel as though one 
had been defiled. There are sublime words that ex- 
alt the soul and lift one up into the realm of high 
and noble things. There are words of peace and 
quiet; there are words of war, with the sound of 
drums and the quick step of marching music in 



2Q4 THE KING'S STEWARDS. 

them. There are words that whistle like rifle bullets. 
There are iron-clad words, words that are like the 
old knights in armor, with spear at rest and sword 
drawn. There are challenging words, that call a 
halt and throw down the gauntlet of battle. When 
they are spoken nothing else is to be said. One may 
act, but to speak is useless. It is a word like that 
that I have chosen for my text. 

I never see this word " nevertheless " but I have a 
picture of a man with his back to the wall and his 
face to the foe. The hot blood is in his cheek, the 
flash of defiance in his eye ; his sword is drawn, and 
he is there to fight to the death. He is hemmed in ; 
the odds are against him ; but, "nevertheless" he will 
do his duty and fight like a man for the truth. 

You may go through the Bible, and you will find 
that there is scarcely any other word so romantic in 
its associations. Take the word on the lips of God 
in voicing his hatred against sin, as we have it in the 
text. It was after Moses had come down from 
Mount Sinai and found the people had gone wild 
after idols. Aaron, the man with the weak back- 
bone, whom Moses had left in his place, had been 
overcome by the clamor of the people, and made for 
them the golden calf ; and they had forsaken the Al- 
mighty for that silly idol. Moses had spoken to the 
people out of an earnest and broken heart, and said, 
" Ye have sinned a great sin : and now I will go up 
unto the Lord ; peradventure I shall make an atone- 



THE ROMANCE OF A WORD. 



295 



ment for your sin." I know of nothing more splen- 
did on the part of any man in the Bible, or out of it, 
than the prayer of Moses on that occasion. The loy- 
alty of it to his people was something magnificent. 
He said to the Lord, " Oh, this people have sinned 
a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. Yet 
now, if thou wilt forgive their sin — ; and if not, blot 
me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast 
written." And the Lord's answer was that he would 
go with Moses and lead the people, and his Angel 
should go before them. Judgment would be delayed, 
and would not come right away; nevertheless, the 
day of judgment would come, and he would visit 
their sin upon them. 

Sometimes people imagine that because the pun- 
ishment of sin is delayed, and does not follow in 
quick pursuit like a hound that bays in sight of 
the deer, therefore the sin is to escape punishment 
altogether. Let no one be deceived in that way. 
" Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." 
God does not always pay at the end of the week; 
but at last he pays. A man may get money cor- 
ruptly, and may heap up ill-gotten gains; neverthe- 
less, the time will come when he must make answer. 
A man may live a life of sham and hypocrisy, and 
keep it hid for a long time; nevertheless, what is 
whispered in the ear shall be heard from the house- 
tops. There is only one way to escape sin; that is, 
to turn State's evidence against it, and drag it to the 



296 THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



mercy-seat of God and have it forgiven. Otherwise 
it is sure to drive the sinner to judgment. 

You may find another very interesting and very 
striking use of this word in connection with the 
story of the spies who were sent into the promised 
land to look over the country and report to the army 
of Moses. They came back loaded down with 
pomegranates and figs and grapes, and full of stories 
of flocks and herds and marvelous fertility. 
They united in declaring that it was a land that 
flowed with milk and honey. But after they had 
aroused everybody's enthusiasm by their report of 
the desirability of the country, they spoiled it all by 
saying, "Nevertheless, the people be strong that 
dwell in the land. * * * And there we saw 
the giants, * * * and we were in our own 
sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight" 
That is the " nevertheless " of the shirker, who sees 
his duty and has many good wishes and desires 
about it, but is scared and does not do it. 

Alas that those people are not all dead! How 
many there are to-day who know enough for their 
salvation ; they have been hearing about Christ from 
childhood; they have seen glimpses of the promised 
land ; they have seen the pomegranates and the figs 
and the luscious grapes of Eshcol, and their mouths 
water for them ; but they go on wandering in the wil- 
derness and the desert, because they are afraid of 
the difficulties that confront them in a righteous life. 



THE ROMANCE OF A WORD. 297 



There is no more pitiable sight than a man who has 
a high admiration for Christ and a longing for the 
Christian life, and who has had visions of a noble 
career that have stirred his soul, who yet stands back 
and says, " I wish I were a Christian ; it is the most 
beautiful life in the world; I know I ought to be a 
Christian, and that I shall never know any real peace 
until I am; nevertheless, the giants are in the way, 
and I dare not risk it." That word " nevertheless " 
has been the stumbling-block over which multitudes 
have gone down to ruin. 

I want to show you another " nevertheless " which 
brings out in beautiful colors the mercy and compas- 
sion of God in seeking to save the children of those 
who have been true to him. It is in the story of one 
of the kings of Israel, a degenerate son of greater 
ancestors. Jeroboam had gone to the bad. He had 
been eighteen years king, and had walked in all the 
sins that a wicked, godless king was likely to find 
out. Yet the inspired writer says, "Nevertheless 
for David's sake did the Lord his God give him a 
lamp in Jerusalem." What a striking figure! That 
was the lamp of mercy. But for David's sake, Jero- 
boam would have found it all darkness long before 
he did. David had been long dead and in heaven, but 
for the sake of the man who had tried to serve him 
with an honest heart, God continued for many years 
to let the lamp of mercy shine on his wicked grand- 
son. 



298 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



I wonder if there are not some who read this who 
are still spared in their indifference and ingratitude, 
though they walk in sinful ways, because of the lov- 
ing prayers of a saintly father or a holy mother, 
who, it may be, has long since gone home to heaven ! 
And yet those prayers may be in vain; they were 
in vain for Jeroboam. God continued to let that 
lamp of mercy hang out for the wicked king for 
many years, but Jeroboam only hardened his heart 
against the God of his fathers. He seems to have 
thought that because God did not strike him down 
at once he never would. I can hear him saying to 
himself, or to some of the drunken courtiers that 
gathered about him, " My grandfather David was a 
great man, no doubt ; but he was old-fashioned, and 
he was altogether too sensitive about sin. Whenever 
he found that he had done wrong, he was full of 
tears and repentance; that was not in good form 
for a king. I do as I please, and I don't see but I 
am just as well off as he was." And so he sneered 
and went on sinning against God until his day of 
judgment came, and he went down into the dark- 
ness of eternal night. O my friends, if the lamp 
of mercy, fed by the oil of the prayers of a loving 
father or a pure mother, still shines upon your path 
with rays of hope, do not spurn it or be indifferent to 
it, but follow that light until it leads you home to 
God. 

There is another " nevertheless " that is full of 



THE ROMANCE OF A WORD. 



299 



comfort and encouragement for every sincere Chris- 
tian who is doing duty faithfully, and yet seems to 
go unrewarded. You may find it recorded in Eze- 
kiel. It is in that remarkable chapter which calls 
to the watchman who has care of the people to do 
his duty in blowing the trumpet when danger threat- 
ens those under his care. The words are stern. " If 
the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the 
trumpet, and the people be not warned," then, says 
the Word of God, the blood of that people will be 
required at the watchman's hands. Then comes the 
word of comfort for the faithful watchman : " Nev- 
ertheless, if thou warn the wicked of his way to turn 
from it ; if he do not turn from his way, he shall die 
in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul.' , 
We cannot always save the people for whom we 
labor; but we can do our part — we can blow the 
trumpet ; we can wave the signal ; we can sound the 
alarm. 

One of the hardest things that earnest souls ever 
have to endure is to have the responsibility of im- 
mortal spirits and then be unable to lead them in 
the right way. David knew what that meant when, 
in that little room over the gate, he cried out in an- 
guish, " O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absa- 
lom ! would God I had died for thee ! " Moses knew, 
when he cried out to God if the people might 
not be forgiven, " blot me, I pray thee, out of thy 
book." Paul knew what it meant when he declared 



300 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



that he was willing to be accursed if the people for 
whom he labored might be saved. May God give us, 
his people, more and more of that feeling ! And yet 
we have the comforting assurance that if we do our 
duty with loving and faithful hearts God holds us 
in honor, even though our work may fail. 

The last picture I have — or two pictures teaching 
the same truth — is full of comfort and consolation. 
One scene is in the story of Jeremiah. Jeremiah's 
tears have washed out or bedimmed much of the 
glory of his heroic character. I think people gen- 
erally think of him as " Jeremiah the weeper," going 
around with his head down, like a bulrush, and mak- 
ing complaints. It is a great mistake, if you are 
going to do a heroic deed, not to do it with a cheer- 
ful heart and a trustful faith. " Nevertheless," Jere- 
miah was a great man, and one of the bravest men 
that ever lived. Read one of the speeches which he 
made in the presence of the royal family of Judah, 
when his life hung in the balance, and he had every 
reason to expect that he would lose his head if he 
spoke fearlessly the message God had given him. 
Yet Jeremiah stood there, facing the angry crowd of 
nobles and princes, and uttered his fearless chal- 
lenge : " The Lord sent me to prophesy against this 
house and against this city all the words that ye have 
heard. Therefore now amend your ways and your 
doings, and obey the voice of the Lord your God ; and 
the Lord will repent him of the evil that he hath pro- 



THE ROMANCE OF A WORD. 



301 



nounced against you. As for me, behold, I am in 
your hand: do with me as seemeth good and meet 
unto you. But know ye for certain, that if ye put 
me to death, ye shall surely bring innocent blood 
upon yourselves, and upon this city, and upon the in- 
habitants thereof : for of a truth the Lord hath sent 
me unto you to speak all these words in your ears." 
Well, the king decided to kill him, and sent his offi- 
cers to have him put to death. There stands Jere- 
miah, God's prophet, with his back to the wall, ready 
to die. Then what happens ? Like a flash of light- 
ning out of a clear sky comes, " Nevertheless the 
hand of Ahikam the son of Shaphan was with Jere- 
miah, that they should not give him into the 
hand of the people to put him to death." Who Ahi- 
kam was the Lord only knows ; but you may depend 
upon it that God has some unheard-of but power- 
ful hand to raise in defense of his people so long 
as there is still work for them to do on earth. When 
God made this world he made it so a man could do 
right in it, and leave the consequences to him. 

And that brings me to my final word, — a word of 
Paul to Timothy. It is the word of an old soldier 
of Christ who has had much experience and is now 
ready to die and knows whereof he speaks. He has 
been talking about many uncomfortable defections 
from the church, and a great many unpleasant things 
he has had to deal with; but with a sigh of relief 
and a smile of absolute faith he says, " Nevertheless 



302 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



the foundation of God standeth sure, having this 
seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his." Yes, 
and David says that God never fails to recognize his 
own, even though they are in disgrace and are hav- 
ing a hard time. When a man is down, his fair- 
weather friends will sometimes pass him in the street 
without seeing him ; but David says that God always 
knew him, even in adversity. God knew Daniel in 
the lions' den, and knew Daniel's friends in the fiery 
furnace. He knew Joseph in the prison of Pharaoh, 
and knew Paul in the dungeon of Nero. 

O brother, sister, if we stick to our faith, if we 
stand steadfast in the right, if we hold to our religion 
and are true to God, then the best things will stay 
with us. Things have been going wrong; you have 
lost your place, may be; death has taken a friend 
you relied on; a misunderstanding has robbed you 
of another; you have lost money, or your health is 
giving way, and the devil has whispered in your 
ear, " Everything is going to pieces; it is all up with 
you; you never will be happy again." My friend, it 
is the devil's lie. Hear noble old Paul, in sight of the 
executioner's block, crying out with cheerful, trum- 
pet voice, " Nevertheless the foundation of God 
standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth 
them that are his ! " 



XXX. 



The Book with Wings. 

" Then I turned, and lifted up mine eyes and looked, and 
behold: a flying roll." — Zechariah 5 : 1. 

On the little island of Patmos John, the apostolic 
saint, old and glorious in his exile, saw in his vision 
an angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the 
everlasting Gospel to preach to all the people in the 
world. This vision of John's was like the New Testa- 
ment version of the Old Testament vision of Zecha- 
riah. The earlier prophet saw in his vision a book — 
for a book in those olden days was called a roll, a 
great roll of manuscript written with a pen. To his 
astonishment, as the angel bade him look into the 
sky he saw what he first thought to be a great bird, 
like an eagle, soaring above him, but as his gaze 
cleared he saw that it was a great book, with wings, 
flying across the heavens. The angel then instructed 
him as to its purpose. It was the witness of God's 
enmity to sin. It was to proclaim the Law of God. 
It was to search out evil. It was to enter the house 
of the thief, the blasphemer, the liar, and destroy 
their iniquity. 



304 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



In these two visions from the Old Testament and 
the New we may see a fitting illustration of the flight 
of the Bible across the centuries and of its present 
mission among men. The Bible is a bird with long 
wings and is out for a long flight. It is the only 
book that comes to us out of the dark, mysterious 
silence of the older world. Thousands of years be- 
fore printing was invented, before there was such a 
thing as writing paper, or books, as we now have 
them, the Bible began its flight. It was written un- 
der every conceivable condition and circumstance. 
Solomon wrote his proverbs in the richest palace 
ever built by man, while some of its prophecies were 
written in dungeons and prisons, in caves and desert 
places. Some of the Psalms were born in the sol- 
diers' camp, when David was an exile fleeing for his 
life ; some of them were written in deep anguish by 
a king in disgrace; others were penned as the over- 
flow of a great soul rejoicing in the highest triumphs 
that can come to a human being. Some of the Bible 
records had their origin back in the darkness and 
dust of the ages, so far that we lose the trail of 
human evidence. All we know is that we have them 
and that the presence of the living God is in them. 

The Bible was written in different languages, by 
men living hundreds and thousands of years apart, 
who were the product of differing and often antag- 
onistic types of temperament and civilization. The 
Bible is history, and philosophy, and. poetry, and 



THE BOOK WITH WINGS. 



305 



prophecy. It deals with everything that is human 
and divine. It talks of God and of angels, as well 
as of men and women. It is a natural book, in 
which the sun shines and the moon and the stars 
give their light. It is a book where the birds sing; 
where the grass grows green on the hillside; where 
the cows low in the evening ; where the lion roars in 
the night, and the flowers lift their heads to greet 
the sunrise of the morning. 

The Bible is in for a long flight, for it meets the 
wants of universal human nature. Years ago some- 
body wrote a book which he called " Gospels of Yes- 
terday," which discussed the writings of men who, 
at different periods, caught the popular ear and the 
world's applause, but after a little lost them again. 
But it is an everlasting Gospel which the Bible flies 
forth to preach. From time to time men have been 
hailed as saviours of society because they have been 
able to bring some message of comfort to what was 
transient or partial in the needs of the human nature 
of their day. They fell in with some popular phase 
of human sentiment. But, as has been well said 
again and again, the glory of Christianity and of 
the Bible, which is its chart, is that its teaching is 
addressed to what is most characteristic in human 
nature and absolutely the same in all members of 
the human race, whether they be rich or poor, 
whether they inhabit one hemisphere or the other, 
whether they live in ancient or modern times. The 



3o6 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



Twenty-third Psalm, the Sermon on the Mount, and 
the Thirteenth Chapter of First Corinthians are 
not dependent on any local setting to make them the 
messenger of God to the human heart. The Bible 
speaks to the universal soul of man. Jesus is the 
center and soul of the Bible, and he was as much at 
home with one class of people as with another. Jesus 
went down to the child, the beggar, the demoniac, the 
harlot, and found in every one of them the infinitely 
precious soul, capable of receiving his message. In 
doing so, Jesus Christ showed that he knew the se- 
cret of the universal religion. 

We are sure that the Bible is in for a long flight, 
because it has in it the divine vitality. It realizes in 
perfection Isaiah's poetic thought about the eagle's 
renewing its youth. The Bible does not need to re- 
new its youth; it is forever young. It is the very 
fountain of life. God is in it. Men who get closest 
to the Bible feel God's presence there. If they get 
close enough, it burns away their sin and purifies 
them from all evil. 

Fales Newhall compared the Bible to nature. 
Nature is ever clean, healthful, and serene. Though 
teeming cities may shed their filth upon her bosom, 
though the malaria may reek and the earthquake 
throb here and there, yet she has an exhaustless re- 
cuperative and assimilative energy which distils per- 
fume from carrion, sweetness from rottenness. So 
the Bible, with all its various moods and seemingly 



THE BOOK WITH WINGS. 



307 



conflicting statements, is ever infinitely calm and 
healthful, because infinitely vital. Nature and the 
Bible are alike because they are twin books from the 
same God. God is the author of both of them ; he is 
in them an ever-living Presence. 

Theodore Parker, whom we have been accustomed 
to think of as almost infidel, had yet clear eyes to see 
this universal flight of the Bible and the great un- 
answerable causes of it. He found the Bible every- 
where — in the cottage of the plain man and in the 
palace of the king. He found it woven into litera- 
ture and coloring the talk of the street. He saw 
that the bark of the merchantman cannot sail to sea 
without it, and that not even a ship-of-war goes into 
conflict without the Bible. His great mind was 
deeply impressed with the fact that while thousands 
of famous writers appear in one century to be for- 
gotten in the next, the silver cord of the Bible is not 
loosed nor its golden bowl broken, though time 
chronicles that tens of centuries pass by. His rich 
imagination saw the Bible as a river springing up in 
the heart of a sandy continent, having its source in 
the skies. As the stream rolls on, making in that 
arid waste a belt of verdure wherever it turns its 
way, creating palm-groves and fertile plains where 
the smoke of the cottage curls up at eventide and 
marble cities send the gleam of their splendor far 
into the. sky — such has been the course of the Bible 
on earth. There is not a boy on all the hills of New 



308 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



England, not a girl born in the filthiest slum of any 
neglected portion of the great city that cries to God 
against the selfishness of modern civilization — not a 
boy or a girl all Christendom through whose lot is 
not made better by the winged book. 

Wherever the Bible flies, in heathen as well as in 
Christian lands, it carries the same blessed purifying 
influence, the same divine comfort, on its wings. 
Robert Moffat, the great missionary, relates that in 
one of his early journeys he came with his compan- 
ions to a heathen village on the banks of the Orange 
River, in Africa. They had traveled far, and were 
hungry, thirsty, and fatigued ; but the people of the 
village rather roughly directed them to halt at a 
distance. The missionaries asked for water, but the 
natives would not supply it. They offered what few 
trinkets they had left for a little milk, and were re- 
fused. It looked as though they must spend a hun- 
gry and a thirsty night within sight of food and 
water that mocked them. 

But as the twilight drew on, a woman approached 
from the heights beyond which the village lay. She 
bore on her head a bundle of wood, and had a vessel 
of milk in her hand. Without saying anything, she 
gave them the milk, laid down the wood, and re- 
turned to the village. A second time she came with 
a cooking-vessel on her head, a leg of mutton in 
one hand, and a bottle of water in the other. She sat 



THE BOOK WITH WINGS. 



309 



down, without saying a word, prepared the fire, and 
put on the meat. 

They asked her again and again who she was. 
She remained silent until affectionately entreated to 
give them a reason for such unlooked-for kindness 
to strangers. Then the tears stole down her dark 
cheeks, and she replied : " I love him whose servants 
you are, and surely it is my duty to give you 
a cup of cold water in his name. My heart is 
full, therefore I cannot speak the joy I feel to see you 
in this out-of-the-world place." 

On learning her history, and that she was a soli- 
tary light burning in a dark place, Mr. Moffat asked 
her how she kept up the light of God in her soul, in 
the entire absence of Christian fellowship. She drew 
from her bosom a copy of the Dutch New Testament, 
which she had received from a missionary some 
years before. " This," she said, " is the fountain 
whence I drink ; this is the oil which makes my lamp 
to burn." 

The Bible has the same power to keep the life 
sweet and pure among the rich and great, beset with 
the fascinations of sin in its most alluring forms, as 
it has to sustain the poor and the simple-hearted. A 
London mission-worker visited a small cottage at 
Windsor, and upon taking a seat which had been 
dusted for him, was told that it was the Queen's 
chair. He was informed that one of the royal prin- 
cesses had stopped her carriage to look at the flow- 



3io 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



ers, and, upon hearing from the daughter that her 
mother was ill, had gone in to see her. The next 
day another royal carriage drove up, and the Queen 
herself stepped out. They were all greatly flurried, 
but the Queen said kindly, " Don't be put about. I 
have not come as the Queen, but as a Christian lady. 
Have you got a Bible?" She was given one, and 
she sat down on the chair and said to the sick 
mother, " I heard from my daughter of your long 
and sad illness, and I have come to comfort you." 
She took the poor woman's wasted hand in hers, and 
said, " Put your trust in Jesus, and you will soon 
be in a land where there is no pain. You are a 
widow; so am I ; we shall soon meet our loved ones." 
She then read the fourteenth chapter of the Gospel 
according to Saint John — " Let not your heart be 
troubled ; " then the Queen knelt down on the floor 
beside that humble sick-bed, and prayed for the 
woman whom she knew as her sister in Christ Jesus, 
because the Book with wings, that flies into the pal- 
ace as well as into the cottage, had taught her to 
do so. 

Sometimes we are told by superficial pessimists 
that the Bible has been pierced by some infidel bullet 
of criticism. But it still flies on, with ever-increasing 
benediction for the world. During the War of 
1 812 Francis Scott Key, who wrote the " Star Span- 
gled Banner," was a prisoner on a British ship while 
Fort McHenry was being bombarded through the 



THE BOOK WITH WINGS. 



3" 



night. He lived the night through in terror and fear. 
He feared, as he saw the glare of the bombs bursting 
in the air and heard the crash of cannon, that in the 
morning the flag of his country would have disap- 
peared from the fort. As the day broke it found 
him peering through the darkness to learn the truth ; 
and as it grew lighter, he exclaimed, " Our flag is 
still there! " And he went away that very morning 
to write that national anthem, " The Star Spangled 
Banner." So, ever and anon, they tell us that some 
set of critics are going to destroy the Bible, and 
bring it down from its long flight of usefulness and 
blessing. But after the bombardment is over and 
the smoke clears away, yonder in the sky of the 
world's civilization flies the winged Book, still 
preaching its everlasting Gospel. 

The Bible is sure of a long flight, so long as human 
nature is what it is, because it not only broods over 
us when we are children, making childhood loving 
and tender ; not only inspires us when we are young 
with its poetry, and with ideals nobler than are 
breathed anywhere else; not only cheers and com- 
forts us amid the struggles of manhood and woman- 
hood; but when the hair whitens, and the shadows 
lengthen toward the west, the Book with Wings does 
not stay behind. When other books lose their interest 
to us because of weakness and old age and ap- 
proaching death, the Bible becomes more precious 
and indispensable. When Sir Walter Scott lay dy- 



312 THE KING'S STEWARDS. 

ing, he said to his friend Lockhart, " Fetch me the 
book." " What book? " said Lockhart. The great 
man smiled, and said, " There is but one Book." 
That one Book not only flies above us, full of good 
cheer and comfort and inspiration and hope, from 
the cradle to the grave, but lights up the path into the 
beyond with unquenchable glory. 

Up in the far Northwest a party of hunters one 
day discovered a skeleton sitting at the foot of a 
great fir-tree. Upon the tree was a paper bearing 
the words, " Here the trail ends." That was all. 
But how suggestive it was of the blindness of the 
human trail without the God and the Christ and 
the immortality and the heaven which the Bible 
reveals to us. Put over against that incident the 
closing words of William C. Gray, the great Chris- 
tian editor of the West, written only a few days 
before he passed away : " In the old times of river 
navigation, we were accustomed to loiter at a poor 
hotel of the period, or walk up and down the landing, 
waiting for the coming of the steamboat. The shores 
of the stream were, at that time, covered with for- 
ests, and the winding channel gave but short vistas ; 
but, while yet miles away, the boat would blow its 
hoarse blast, and we sometimes could see her pillar 
of smoke rising above the trees. Then all was busy 
excitement, a hurrying to and fro of stevedores and 
truckmen and passengers. When she had landed 
and made her exchanges, and turned her prow again 



THE BOOK WITH WINGS. 



313 



into the stream, there was a fluttering of handker- 
chiefs from decks to shore, and not infrequently 
some tears. 

" It seems to me that I have heard the sound of 
the coming ship, pretty distinctly at times and more 
faintly and softly at others, the peal modified by the 
wind and by the trees. But anyway, the boat is on 
the river, and headed my way. She is already past 
due, and must not be expected to delay very long. 

" Whither shall we be borne ? I think that when 
we waken to consciousness from the anaesthesia of 
death we will find ourselves in the midst of silent 
beauty. We will need a rest, and silence is its neces- 
sary condition. An angel will be seen soaring by, 
waving us a smile of recognition and passing on. 
The trees will be still, and the river flow peaceably. 
No roar will rise from the streets of the city that 
lies off there in the blue. No one will be in a hurry, 
for time will not fly, nor will there be any race for 
the swift or battle for the strong. When the deer 
comes down to drink, it will not lift its timid head 
to search the scene for an enemy. * * * When 
we hear the chirp of a warbler in the trees we may 
signal it, and it will sing us a song. The plaintive 
note of the song-sparrow will tell of love or joy, 
not of grief. If a wave of sound wanders across the 
scene, it will not be the snarling note of the bugle, 
nor the boom of the cannon, which tells of a vin- 
dictive, fiery and tremendous blow, nor the ping of 



314 



THE KING'S STEWARDS. 



a bullet on its eager message of laceration and pain. 
We will never again have a sinking heart when we 
think of Zion. Her warfare will be accomplished, 
and none within or without her walls can harm her 
more. The purity of her white robes will be no purer 
than her heart. * * * Without fear, without 
restraint, without reproach, we shall be free to search 
God's records in all realms, spiritual and material, 
high and low, far and near, and read aloud the truths 
which we find." 

Shortly before his death Doctor Gray aroused 
from long unconsciousness, as if suddenly awaked 
from profound slumber, and said, " I have a mes- 
sage to deliver." An assistant hurried to his side, 
with pencil and paper, when the dying Christian dic- 
tated a message of love to his fellow-editors, in 
which he said : "I expect within a few hours to 
glide off the stays, like a launching ship, and be afloat 
on the wide ocean of eternity. I expect in a few 
hours to be in the shadows which are only a 
brighter life, and from that misty region I call back 
most cordially ' God prosper and bless you all/ It 
pleases me to think that this shall be among the last 
of my coherent thoughts." How splendidly he re- 
alized the truth of David's assurance in the shep- 
herd's song: "Though I walk through the valley 
of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil : for thou 
art with me ; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." 

It is the mission of the Bible to fly on with its mes- 



THE BOOK WITH WINGS. 



315 



sage of hope and salvation, until men everywhere 
shall lose the sin and the fear out of their hearts, and 
know the confidence which sustains the Christian. 
There is an old fable that tells of a fisherman's hut 
which was changed to silver, walls and floors, win- 
dows and doors and furniture, by a wondrous little 
silver lamp that was brought into it. Such a change 
the Bible is working in the civilization of mankind, 
and such a change it works in every individual hu- 
man heart where it is given the right of way. 



-12 



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